Hayk Vardanyan has been in detention for 6 years. For 5 of these 6 years, he was kept in the Hospital of Convicts penitentiary. During brief respites of health, he was taken back to his deployment site. At the moment, Hayk Vardanyan is in the Armavir penitentiary.
He was examined at Izmirlyan Medical Center and it was decided that an operation is necessary but first, antibacterial treatment. However, instead of treatment and surgery, the convict was unexpectedly transferred to Armavir penitentiary.
The outraged convict announced a hunger strike. Today is the 7th day of the hunger strike. The woman assures that her husband’s condition is getting worse day by day.
It is not the first time that Hayk has resorted to extremely dangerous measures in his fight for his health. The last hunger strike was in August. It lasted 23 days. His request then was to take him to the hospital. Now it’s the same: establish medical supervision, treat, operate, and not violate the right of the convict to serve his sentence in a healthy state.
Naira Babayan, deputy director and public relations officer of the Penitentiary Medicine Center, explaining to Forrigts.am why Hayk Vardanyan is not being transferred to the Convicts’ Hospital, said: “I spoke with Hayk’s wife, his condition is normal, his weight has decreased by 11 kilos, his sugar level is 5.9; The neurologist also looked at him; he was only in a slightly tense state. He was prescribed sedatives, which he refused, demanding to be transferred to the Convicts’ Hospital. He does not need inpatient treatment now.”
Meanwhile, the convict’s wife has a different opinion: “If he is a healthy person, why did they keep him in the prison hospital for 5 years? We operated on a prostate adenoma, we removed sand and stones from his kidney, but now he has stones and sand in the other kidney, we operated on a bilateral hernia, they opened the urethra a little, the doctor said, thank God, the nitrogen will go down, he will not suffocate. Do we have to wait until he suffocates, so that then they can say he had a heart attack?”
Hayk Vardanyan’s main illness, which makes his life unbearable, is urethral stricture, that is, narrowing. This is a severe, crippling disease in men, in which there is sudden or gradual scarring of the urethra, after which it closes, urination becomes impossible, and the nitrogen content in the blood increases.
In addition, in Hayk’s examination it is mentioned: “Lower urinary tract infection, urolithiasis, left kidney sand, stone, pulsating hypertension, severe course, type 2 diabetes mellitus requiring insulin.”
Margarita Vardanyan says that due to the wrong treatments, the inattention of the doctors of the penitentiary institutions, the diabetes became complicated, reached the insulin-dependent stage, and because of that inattention, the bladder was crippled.
“The chief doctor of the Convicts’ Hospital Voskanyan kept my husband with an open catheter for three years, and now when I went to the professor, he said, that is the reason, that the bladder has weakened, it is not functioning, urine is constantly flowing, he no longer has a bladder,” Hayk Vardanyan’s wife complains.
After the last examination, the doctors of the civil hospital issued an order according to which Hayk Vardanyan should be kept under the mandatory supervision of a urologist, cardiologist, endocrinologist, infectious disease specialist, that is, at least in the Convicts’ Hospital of prison.
However, Hayk Vardanyan is kept in “Armavir” prison. The Penitentiary Medicine Center told his wife that they could provide medical assistance only if the convict fainted.
The wife is going to call to account all those doctors and employees of the Penitentiary Medicine Center, whose actions caused her husband to lose his health. She says that Nara of Penitentiary Medicine Center does not answer her calls anymore. When she calls, they say that she is not there, she has gone to Armavir and Nubarashen and they don’t know if she will return or not.
“I have heard the conversation between them and the doctor on the phone. They say to the doctor: ‘Why did you say that an operation is needed?’ The doctor tells me: ‘What are you putting me into?” -complains the convict’s wife. And her sick husband has no choice but to go on a hunger strike and appeal to the press.
Syuzan Simonyan