Are Elderly Parents Encouraged to Give Birth More and More in Armenia and Karabakh?

Baku/24.03.21/Turan: In Armenia, a decision was made on state assistance to the population to improve the demographic imbalance, aggravated by the results of the war with Azerbaijan.

As Acting Head of the Department of Maternal and Child Health Protection of the Ministry of Health of Armenia Nune Pashayan said in Yerevan, the demographic situation in Armenia has sharply deteriorated. In particular, the population reproduction rate decreased to 1.6, with the required indicator not lower than 2.1. "Compared to 1990, the birth rate in the country has decreased by 1.8 times. There is also a problem of infertility, which is faced by 14.9% of women and 9.5% of men," Pashayan said, Sputnik-Armenia news agency reported.

A state program has been adopted to solve the problem. The state pays for the determination of the cause of infertility, the course of treatment, as well as the procedure for artificial insemination or insemination.

Among other categories, the beneficiaries of the program can also be military personnel, residents of 1,847 border settlements, and, most surprisingly, "parents of soldiers and volunteers who died during the 44-day war."

In the war, servicemen of the Armenian army aged 18-35 (the overwhelming majority) were killed. Based on the minimum age of young mothers - 18 years old, the parents of those killed in the war are now 36-53 years old. Doctors do not recommend having children at this age because of the danger of dangerous childbirth and the high risk of having a child with hereditary incurable diseases.

According to the specialized medical website https://avicenna72.ru, starting from the age of 35, and especially after 40, the likelihood of a chromosomal abnormality in a child increases. These can be both relatively common pathologies such as Down syndrome, Patau or Edwards syndrome, or more rare. So, if a 30-year-old mother has about one in 800 chances of having a baby with Down syndrome, then by the age of 40 we are talking about a ratio of one to a hundred, and at 44 years old - one in 25.

However, the well-known medical facts do not stop the Armenian legislators. Within the framework of the program, 49 embryos were transferred during 2020, and in 2021 - already 44 embryos. For the implementation of the program, 917 million drams (about $ 1.7 million) were allocated from the state budget, which is three times more than the amount spent in 2020. Within the framework of this program, 62 children have already been born, reports the Armenian media.

The "successful experience" of Armenia was transferred to Karabakh by the local "president" Arayik Harutyunyan.

Is it possible to solve the demographic problem, which was aggravated by the war, with the help of in vitro fertilization ?! Sputnik Armenia columnist Sergei Bablumyan reflects on this.

"... but the increase in the birth rate in Artsakh through in vitro fertilization, formalized as an instruction of the NKR President Arayik Harutyunyan, is gratifying. The first thing that comes to mind after the directive has been passed is: why give birth to children and raise warriors out of them, when the state so ineptly disposes their lives in the war? The figure of 5,000 killed in the last Karabakh war (according to some reports even more) is striking, even if such is the price of victory. And here there is no victory, but a shameful defeat in all respects," Bablumyan admits. -0-—0—