The Armenian EyeCare Project (AECP) has launched a screening, diagnostics, and treatment program to combat neo-natal retinopathy, an ailment on the rise in Armenia. Led by AECP international associates, treatment for Retinopathy of Prematurity will be implemented in several Neonatal Intensive Care Units in Yerevan.

Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP) is a condition in which abnormal changes occur in the retina that can result in childhood blindness. The risk group for ROP is defined as infants born with a birth weight of less than 1500 g or with a gestational age of 30 weeks or less.

A center in Yerevan that opened recently as part of a larger donor registry to harvest stem cells for transplants has registered its first success this week as its collection has proved life-saving for a patient in Europe.

The stem cells of Frederic Safarian, an Iranian-Armenian, matched with those of a non-Armenian woman living in Belgium and suffering from a grave blood-related illness. The transplant was successfully performed on Thursday night in Belgium.

The number of nose surgeries in Armenia has grown ten times during the past five years with the number increasing three times in 2009 as compared to 2008. Specialists even predict that Armenians with hook (ethnic) noses will soon become a rare sight.

According to Armen Hovhannisyan, Head of the Plastic Surgery Department at Erebuni Medical Center, the main factors for the increased number of plastic surgeries are the improved living conditions and trust towards plastic surgeons.

Over the past 10 years, infertility in Armenia has been reduced by nearly half, according to new data released by the Ministry of Health (MOH). Last year, 16.8 percent of reproductive-aged women were found infertile, compared with 31.5 percent at the start of the decade.

Urgent measures should be taken in regard to Voghjaberd waste burial ground, according to John Vijgen, Director of International HCH & Pesticides Association invited by the OSCE Office in Yerevan as an expert.

In 2009 Armenia registered 7657 patients with cancer, which is by 321 more than in 2008.

“Three to four percent growth of the disease has been registered, and it’s not unique for Armenia only, the same four percent growth is registered everywhere in the world. Twelve million people around the world suffer from cancer, the annual mortality rate is seven million,” says doctor of medical science, professor Gagik Bazikyan, deputy director of RA National Center of Oncology.

Armenia has reported an outbreak of African Swine Fever, according to reports of the International Organization for Animal Health (OIE).

The Armenian Ombudsman has raised concerns over two provisions in Armenia’s current law “On Human Organs and (or) Tissues Transplantation” which are contradictory and create conditions for “arbitrary interpretation, implementation and misuse.”

Armenia’s chief infection specialist said today that Armenia’s institutes of higher education may be closed early for winter break, due to the spread of seasonal flu.

The threat of flu – swine and otherwise -- in Armenia has apparently led people to buy more garlic as an unconventional means of prevention, a situation that sellers have taken advantage of by quickly altering price tags.

Garlic is considered to have a certain preventive and even therapeutic effect when used before and during flu and common cold symptoms. Now it has proved to be a cash crop for some Armenian merchants.