Description

Student Council Union of Alaverdi ADP established monitoring groups and conducted monitoring on “students’ annual medical checkups” in beneficiary schools of Alaverdi ADP.

The monitoring revealed that the annual medical checkups are not properly implemented at schools. To follow up on the issue, the Student Council Union had a meeting with the Governor of Lori Province and presented him their monitoring results, which was also covered by mass media .

As a response, the Governor instructed the head of health department to organize a meeting of Student Council Union with the regional public health officials to discuss and follow up on the monitoring findings. The follow up meeting took place in October. During the meeting the union members provided detailed information on where and how the monitoring was carried out and urged health officials to solve the issue. The latter promised that the issue will be further addressed with respective community PHC providers.

“Initially we had certain confusion on how this issue should be addressed, but understood the process better when we met with the governor and then with regional health department authorities” said Gegham Ghardyan, Haghpat school student council president. These processes were good opportunity for the children to raise their voices to access essential health services and were one more step for protection of their rights.

As there are still communities where the “students’ annual medical checkups” are not properly implemented for various reasons (luck of appropriate medical instruments and etc.), Student Council Union decided to continue their monitoring and take further advocacy actions.