Media Review April 18

Combating thalassemia, reducing investment in the real sector, and calls for restrictions on social networks are the leading themes of today's media.

The newspaper Azerbaijan writes about the fight against thalassemia. Among patients there are children and teenagers. According to studies conducted in recent years, 5-7% of the population in the country are carriers of the thalassemia gene.

When gene carriers give birth to a child, the risk of the disease increases. Currently, about 3,500 patients are registered at the Thalassemia Center. 1,200 of them need blood transfusions every 2-4 weeks.

Radical treatment of the disease is bone marrow transplantation. There have been over 75 such operations at the Thalassemia Center since 2013. While in previous years about 300 patients with thalassemia registered annually, this year the figure has decreased by 40%.

The Azadliq.info website writes that investments in the country's economy have decreased by 37% or 1 billion manat, which does not promise anything good.

In January-March, a total of 1.7 billion manat was invested in the production sector, although a similar figure in 2018 amounted to 2.2 billion manat. It turns out that the government could not direct the existing investment policy opportunities to the real sector.

The newspaper Novoye Vremya publishes material on appeals to strengthen control over social networks. Social networks are just platforms through which social problems manifest themselves. Calling for a ban on social networks is the same as offering a ban on using cars because of accidents with human victims.

Among other things, the calls for the closure of social networks contradict the statements of top state officials about the complete freedom of the Internet in Azerbaijan.