Cases of both acute intestinal infections and Salmonella infection (salmonellosis) increased in Armenia in 2016-2018, according to a study carried out by Doctor of Nutrition David Pipoyan, the head of the Food Chain Risk Assessment Center of Armenia’s National Academy of Sciences.
“Cases of intestinal infections have grown to 11,123 from 9,092, while salmonellosis cases have increased to 537 from 361. In January-December 2019, we already recorded 793 cases of salmonellosis,” Pipoyan said in a Facebook post.
“The negative dynamics are obvious. Food safety and public health are closely and inextricably linked. The risk-based decision making also contributes to shedding light on the country’s priority issues,” he wrote.
Ara Boyadjian says
In August 2019 our family of 16 including cousins visited Armenia (Our 20th visit). We had six different persons with different days having intestinal issues of which two persons were admitted to a hospital. The others were bedridden for 3-5 days.
When the hotel staff called for a doctor, in both cases an ambulance came and they insisted to take the patient to a hospital called Nork Infection. In the second case we asked to be taken to Nairi hospital they refused and insisted on taking us to Nork Infection which we had a very bad experience during our first visit. It is anything but a hospital, very old and bad ER room, then they insist to admitting into a very old room with no air conditioning, open window with lots of flies, extremely bad/old bed sheets, etc.…
In both cases the patients were asked if they had any watermelon. In both cases they had blood work done, and a “Sistema” hooked for dehydration, and a non-sanitized oxygen mask was put on the patient nose and mouth…. eventually in the case of the first patient (a younger Doctor) told her to eat boiled potatoes, yogurt and rice. A few days later in the case of the second patient (an older doctor) said not to eat any potatoes or yogurt, instead eat only “grisha” pilaf. For the second patient the condition dragged about three weeks, we had to cut our vacation short and return home.
Main reason of this in our opinion, is FLYs, kitchens, food preparation counters are not clean, windows have no screens, buffet breakfasts are full of flies, almost in every restaurant.
Unfortunately, No one in Armenia, thinks that Flies are the culprit, thus they don’t do anything to prevent and correct this issue.