PanArmenian.net reports that the First Lady of the Republic of Georgia, Sandra Roelofs, is currently paying an official visit to Armenia. Roelofs will be paying particular attention to medical, social and cultural issues in the South Caucasus, and possibly tuberculosis if this report is anything to go by.

Also a meeting between Armenian First Lady Bella Kocharian and Sandra Roelofs is planned. Sandra Elizabeth Rulovs is WHO Ambassador to the Eastern Europe on the fight against tuberculosis. The wife of Georgian president also will visit Armenian great composer Aram Khachaturian’s museum and will meet there with professors and students of Yerevan State Conservatoire. In the Georgian Embassy a reception will be held in Sandra Elizabeth Roelofs’s honor, ‘Novosti Gruzia’ reports

Interestingly, RFE/RL ran a story on tuberculosis in Armenia last month. Despite the fancy shops and restaurants in downtown Yerevan, the disease remains a matter of some concern even in the capital. This follows on from a story that Emil Danielyan wrote on the problem after I took him to a run down hostel in Yerevan’s Erebuni district. The update is here.

The government approved on Thursday a new nine-year plan of actions aimed at combating a dramatic spread of tuberculosis in Armenia that has been registered over the past decade.

Its adoption followed the completion of a similar drive launched by the government three years ago. Officials said the latest “national program” against the potentially deadly disease will also be mostly financed by foreign donors.

“This program will run from 2007 through 2015,” said Vahan Poghosian, a senior Armenian Health Ministry official coordinating the anti-TB campaign. “It will involve training courses [for medical personnel], purchase of laboratory equipment and, most importantly, medicines.”

Armenian medical authorities have reported a sharp increase in the incidence of the disease since the early 1990s, attributing it to malnutrition and a lack of winter heating. According to the Health Ministry, the number of people suffering from tuberculosis rose by 18 percent to almost 6,500 between 2000 and 2005. Officials there admit that the real number is probably much higher because the authorities are unable to register all infected people, who are usually poor and can not afford healthcare.

The ministry data show that more than 100 people died of TB in 2003. Poghosian declined to disclose the death toll for 2004 and 2005, concentrating instead on government efforts to tackle the problem. He said medical authorities are now much better equipped to quickly detect and treat cases of TB than they were before the launch of the first government program worth $5 million.

Anyway, the woman in the photograph below died a month after I took this photo despite Emil’s attempts to force the Ministry of Health to admit her in the TB dispensary in Abovian. More on 44-year-old Zarik Hakobyan and social issues such as poverty and related concerns such as TB can be found in my book, Armenia: Poverty, Transition & Democracy, which can be purchased at The Club in Yerevan.

I also posted something on the same subject last June.

Tuberculosis victim, Erebuni, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2004