A partnership between Valley Children’s Hospital and an Armenian hospital will advance the level of care provided to women and children in that country.

Valley Children’s CEO Todd Suntrapak Thursday signed an agreement with the CEO of Wigmore Women’s & Children’s Hospital, Dr. Zaven Koloyan, for an ongoing exchange of medical professionals.

The union will bring doctors from Armenia to the Valley’s biggest pediatric hospital to train and send local doctors, nurses, and medical staff to Armenia to help develop operations in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital.

“The ultimate goal of this collaboration is for Wigmore Hospital to become the standard of care within Armenia and potentially other countries in that region,” said Dr. Varoujan Altebarmakian, retired Fresno physician and program advisor for Wigmore Hospital.

In 2016, when Koloyan was doing his residency in what is considered one of Yerevan’s best hospitals, he witnessed “Soviet-style management, poor infrastructure, poor economics and very low level of education.”

“But the main trouble for me is there was no other place to go because it was the best hospital,” Koloyan said.

Koloyan decided to start a new hospital to provide pediatric care.

Founders reached out to Altebarmakian to take on an advisory role at the hospital which he was told would “change the culture of health care delivery systems in that country.”

Wigmore Hospital opened in December 2022. But to advance care, Altebarmakian said they needed a partner in the U.S. That’s when they turned to Valley Children’s Hospital.

“After a few years of working on the organizational structure and the leadership roles, we realized that we needed a partner outside Armenia to train the leaders and also the physicians in Armenia,” Altebarmakian said.

https://gvwire.com/2023/11/03/valley-childrens-hospital-partnership-sends-fresno-doctors-nurses-to-armenia/