Armenia is moving forward with redesigning the model and structure of primary health care (PHC) in the country. A technical team from the WHO European Centre for Primary Health Care discussed the country’s PHC priorities with Armenia’s Deputy Minister of Health and the Ministry of Health’s (MoH) PHC Task Force during a recent visit to the country. The meeting also identified areas where WHO could provide technical assistance.
Currently Armenia is facing numerous challenges in health care, with noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) accounting for an estimated 93% of all deaths in the country, which is higher than the global average of 71%. Governance, financing, workforce, model of care, quality of care and digital technologies are all areas of concern that need to be addressed in order to improve the health-care system.
The country committed to the development of PHC reforms based on the European Programme of Work, 2020–2025, and the 2018 Astana Declaration on Primary Health Care, as well as the 2020 WHO and UNICEF Operational Framework for Primary Health Care. During a recent high-level meeting in Yerevan, the PHC Task Force discussed existing challenges and reaffirmed priorities.
During the visit the team contacted PHC workers in various PHC facilities and co-facilitated a roundtable discussion with key stakeholders, including representatives from the MoH, international partners and donors, and shared their observations from the mission. The team was impressed by the potential of the information system developed by Armenia’s national e-health operator, ArMed.
The team then met with the Minister of Health to reaffirm PHC priorities and agree on WHO-specified technical support, a visit to the WHO PHC Demonstration Platform in Kazakhstan, participation in the performance measurement and management programme, and a brief mission report to the MoH.
Overall, the mission identified areas for improvement in Armenia’s PHC system and outlined specific steps that the WHO European Centre for Primary Health Care can take to provide technical support and assistance in the priority areas listed below.
- Workforce: to ensure an adequate supply of health professionals, the Government of Armenia needs to revisit the supply of narrow specialists according to future needs, retrain some narrow specialists into family doctors, revise their scope of practice, redistribute them between hospital outpatient departments, and increase the supply of nurses.
- Model of care: revise family medicine and nursing training to strengthen focus on selected NCDs, implement revised clinical guidelines and protocols, ensure alignment between clinical pathways and guidelines, and identify and promote a network of champions of family medicine.
Implementing these reforms will help to ensure the long-term success of PHC in Armenia.
