Elmira Alaverdyan did not allow her son, now 20-year-old Vazgen Gyozalyan from Chinchin Chinchin village, to accomplish at least his 8th year of school. The boy often was losing consciousness. “He kept fainting. We were taken to Berd [regional center] by ambulance, where he received some symptomatic treatment. That’s why he did not finish the school year. I did not want my son to be bad again, you know.”
On December 14, one of the doctors at the Military Medical Commission in Martuni, hearing the mother’s complaints, told her: “You came to the doctor and that’s why you wrote such things about your son.”
On that day, the mother managed to enter the Military Medical Commission room almost by force. “They didn’t let me in. I got into a fight,” she says. But nothing helped. The son was recognized fit for military service. The mother thinks that, by making such a decision, the commission grossly violates the law.
Vazgen Gyozalyan, born in 2000, was first sent a notice in 2018. Medical examinations have found numerous deviations, which are recorded: “Has heart rhythm and conduction disorder: sinus inadequacy, pronounced bradyarrhythmia, upper ventricle pacemaker migration, pronounced arrhythmias, mitral valve prolapse 3-4 mm, mitral backflow 1 degree, sinusitis, etc. The conscription was delayed for 10 months. After 10 months, they re-examined him and found a larger list of heart problems, including abnormal sinus nodal pathology, in which stoppages were frequent and lasted for more than 2 seconds: in these cases, he would have been found not fit for service in the army. In the case of Vazgen Gyozalyan, sinusoidal stoppagess were recorded from 1.9 to 2.6 seconds. This time, he was given half a year of deferment.
The third time the diagnosis was, again, not reassuring, and even worse. Elmira tells us that a doctor attached to the Tavush Military Committee, seeing the diagnosis, told Elmira that her son should be freed from military service and registered in the reserve.
However, doctors at the Military Medical Commission voided the documents and found Vazgen fit for service with restrictions.
From frontier Chinchin village, Elmira Alaverdyan reached to Yerevan, 5 Moskovyan Street, where public council meetings under the RA Minister of Defense headed by the minister’s adviser Gegham Harutyunyan take place and citizens’ applications and complaints are being discussed.
“The committee decided that my Vazgen was not fit for service,” Elmira Alaverdyan says. But today, the Central Military Medical Commission overturned the decision, finding the boy fit for service. The mother sheds tears fearing the worst.
“I told the doctor, I wish you come to our village, to see in what conditions we live. My elder son served in Karabakh, my husband fought, then worked as a contract serviceman for 7 years. The Turks killed my uncle’s child, they killed my uncle. We went through the battles. I have never whined. Our people have never avoided service. But Vazgen’s case is different; he should never serve, according to the law. If needed, I will bring people to the government door and ask Nikol Pashinyan [the Prime Minister] what are you doing? Keeping healthy boys at home, to party, and taking sick children to the posts and killing them. What is it that you want?” the mother cries.
She was going to fight for her sick child by all means.
We asked Gegham Harutyunyan, Head of the Public Council under the RA Minister of Defense, for clarification.
“We had petitioned for the case to be re-examined, with specific, substantive notes, but the medical commission did not agree. The cardiologist believes that we have misinterpreted the data,” he said.
Aren’t they discharging men from the army with a diagnosis of cardiac sinusitis?
To the Forrights.am’s question, he replied: “It is a very professional issue, I cannot interfere with it, but I am going to show the documents to the cardiologists once more and consult with them. The final decision is theirs. By the way, this young man had once received a deferment at our request.”
Syuzan Simonyan