Bringing Health and Hope To the People of Armenia

Rita Balian recently received the USAID Outstanding Citizenship Achievement Award, as well as the Spirit of Life Award, in recognition of her volunteer efforts in her native Armenia.

What started as one psychologist’s endeavor to awaken the artistic instinct within Armenian children has grown into a major health care initiative. Today, the walls of the American Armenian Wellness Center, a state-of-the-art facility in Yerevan, Armenia, are filled with brightly colored children’s artwork. The women who come to the Wellness Center for breast and cervical cancer screening are the beneficiaries of the compassion and drive of a pragmatic businesswoman, educator and art lover who never forgot her ethnic heritage. From her home overlooking the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., Rita Balian, President and CEO of the American Armenian Cultural Association (AACA), has accomplished what some might have called impossible — the creation of a thriving, modern women’s health care center in Armenia that holds the promise of expansion.

In 1991 Armenia declared its independence from the Soviet Union, becoming the first republic to do so. With Armenia’s independence, the Armenian American community, including the Balians, felt a greater responsibility to help the young republic succeed. Rita Balian was struck by the poor health care facilities in Armenia, particularly the utter lack of preventive medicine for women, which she observed during her annual trips. Balian lost five dear Armenian friends - teachers, mothers and grandmothers - to breast cancer, while her two sisters in the United States were saved through early detection. The breast cancer screening equipment in Armenia was decades old and grossly inadequate on the one hand, while radical mastectomies were often performed unnecessarily, on the other.

The AACA initiated the challenge to bring modern mammography to Armenia in the fight against breast cancer, the leading cause of cancer deaths among Armenian women. With the help of her good friend, Hranush Hakobian, who was then Armenia’s Minister of Social Welfare and Services, she persuaded Armenia’s Minister of Health to allocate space for the women’s center at a medical university. Upon her return home, Balian rallied Armenian Americans throughout the United States to support the funding initiative, persuaded U.S. corporate sponsors to donate equipment and supplies, and enlisted the volunteer assistance of doctors from leading U.S. medical institutions to help her initiate and develop a diagnostic center. The U.S. Department of State’s Humanitarian Assistance Program also donated equipment and expertise for the project. The Center opened in April 1997.

Since its inception, the staff of the center has grown from three to 36 medical and administrative professionals who have been trained in the U.S. and on site by the best in the field. U.S. medical professionals from Washington Hospital Center, the Greater Baltimore Medical Center, Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University and the University of Southern California have traveled to Armenia to train and have also hosted Armenian doctors and biomedical engineers for advanced training in mammography, breast biopsy, gynecological basic services and Pap smears, cytology and histology. The Center also retains two oncology consultants and one pathologist in order to provide free clinical services to patients with breast lesions.

“With the introduction of American technology and know-how,” Balian says, “the Mammography Center revolutionized women’s healthcare delivery in Armenia by providing reliable medical screening and diagnosis, maintaining qualified medical and administrative staff, utilizing state-of-the art equipment, and creating public awareness of the benefits of early detection. Today, the Center is a clean, modern facility that has won the trust of the public and the confidence of the medical institutions in the region.”

The Armenian American Wellness Center currently occupies the first floor of this building in Yerevan.

In January 2002, with the addition of the gynecological department and a pathology laboratory, the center was renamed the Armenian American Wellness Center. Today, the Wellness Center remains the finest of its kind in the entire former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Two satellite clinics have since opened, and regular bimonthly medial missions to vulnerable Armenian regions have been organized. Since its inception in 1997, over 60,000 women have been screened, and of those diagnosed with breast cancer, more than 1,500 women have received treatment.

“This has been a wonderful experiment that has proven so successful,” says Michael Lemmon, the former U.S. Ambassador to Armenia. “The Center has great management, good accountability, and transparency in their operations. It’s the perfect example of partnership between NGO’s and U.S. and Armenian medical institutions, corporations and governments.”