|
|
A Eurasia Foundation Grantee
Profile
Making A Difference in Northern Armenia
With Funding from the Lincy Foundation,
the Kumairy Clinic is caring for thousands
in the Earthquake Zone
It started with a damaged ultrasound machine that required a new tube at
a cost of $15,000. For Gyumri's Kumairy Clinic, one of only two health
care providers operating an ultrasound machine in Armenia and the only
one outside Yerevan lack of funds for a replacement tube meant turning
thousands of patients away.
The Clinic turned to the Eurasia Foundation for help.
With a low-interest loan obtained through the Foundation's Small
Business Loan Program, the Kumairy Clinic purchased and installed a new
Roentgen tube early this year, and diagnostic services resumed
immediately. The loan was made possible by a grant from the Lincy
Foundation to the Loan Program to cover loan requests from the
earthquake zone.
In keeping with its vision to promote economic development in Armenia
and particularly throughout the republic's earthquake-ravaged areas in
the north, the Lincy Foundation granted a quarter of million dollars to
the Eurasia Foundation in 1997. Through this grant, the Eurasia
Foundation has significantly expanded its lending program in the Shirak
region through a partnership agreement with Shirakinvestbank, a local
financial institution.
Once part of Armenia's state health care system, Gyumri's Kumairy Clinic
was privatized in the early 1990's when the Armenian government was no
longer able to provide funding to cover the cost of basic medical
care. Now a profit-making corporation affiliated with Yerevan's
Diagnostica Health Center, the Kumairy Clinic serves Gyumri and the
Shirak region. Equipped with a modern, on-site laboratory, the Clinic
offers a wide range of medical services, including life-saving physical
examinations using ultrasound and echoscopy. The Clinic's staff
comprises general practitioners, cardiologists, neuro-pathologists, a
gynecologist, a urologist, a pediatrician, an ophthalmologist, and other
specialists.
Running a private enterprise has not stopped the Kumairy Clinic from
assisting needy patients who cannot afford regular fees. Of the Clinic's
11,000 patients in 1997, 6% received government help, while a full 30%
were given Clinic discounts of up to 50%. In the words of the Clinic's
management, "No one is refused treatment."
Furthermore, the Kumairy Clinic announced free, "open door"
examinations for the population of Gyumri during two consecutive days in
April. The response was considerable, with close to 2,000 patients
receiving comprehensive tests and physician consultations during April
10 and 11.
Since the replacement of the broken tube, the number of patients
examined by the Kumairy Clinic's echoscopy machine has doubled. People
from all over northern Armenia, and even a number of patients from
neighboring Georgia, have visited the Clinic and received diagnostic
services.
As a joint stock corporation, the Kumairy Clinic posted a 1,100,000-dram
($2,200) profit for this year's first quarter. The management plans to
apply for another medical equipment loan from the Eurasia Foundation
once the current balance is paid in the next 18 months.
Created by the US government in 1993 and currently funded by a USAID and
other public and private donors, the Eurasia Foundation is an
independently managed grant and loan making organization headquartered
in Washington, DC, with field offices in the 12 New Independent States
of the former Soviet Union. With an open-door policy designed to
encourage initiative at the grass roots, the Foundation's field offices
respond to local funding needs, providing financial support for economic
development and civic reform, and helping the NIS build strong,
market-driven economies within a solid democratic framework.
WHAT'S IN A MACHINE?
Echoscopy Is Saving Lives
One of the most important developments in clinical medicine in the past
decades has been the non-invasive imaging of organs and body structures
in the diagnosis of disease. One of these techniques, commonly employed
in hospitals and private practice, makes use of ultrasound. Ultrasound
techniques are not only non-invasive, but also harmless to the patient,
i.e. no radio-active radiation is required to obtain an image of the
structures under investigation. Therefore, echoscopy by means of
ultrasound is especially suitable for repeated observations, for
example, to follow up on the progression of disease and the
intra-uterine development of the fetus, and in prolonged epidemiological
studies. In recent years methods have been developed which makes it
possible to bring the transducer close to the organ to be investigated,
providing detailed structural information.
Echoscopic ultrasound systems have been developed not only to image
on-line static structures, but also to follow the dynamic behavior of
tissue structures. One of the first on-line dynamic applications was the
recording of the movement of cardiac structures, like heart valves and
ventricular walls, during the cardiac cycle.
The recording of movements of blood has also become routine procedure.
For example, the on-line recording of flow patterns in arteries, using
color flow imaging, has become an important tool to diagnose moderate
and severe atherosclerotic lesions, and to study hemodynamics in the
fetus, while color flow imaging has been shown to be essential in the
localization of deeper structures.
|