The work in Armenia is being done under Baroness Caroline Cox's leadership with local on the ground partners. This is the work that HART-US wants to leverage support for and to assist in bringing awareness to through its US partners.

Background

In the 1920s Stalin dislocated part of Eastern Armenia (Nagorno Karabakh) relegating it, and its people to Azerbaijan. With the dissolution of the USSR Azerbaijan began the ethnic cleansing of 15,000 Armenians living in this enclave.

The resulting conflict with Azerbaijan occurred during 1991 and 1994. Although this ended in a cease-fire agreement, to date there is no formal peace treaty and currently a trade blockade has been imposed by Turkey and Azerbaijan.

Economic growth is impeded and over half the population live below the poverty line. After years of war the humanitarian situation is particularly serious in Nagorno-Karabakh. However, most major aid organizations have been denied access to the territory and UN organizations have refused to provide assistance there.

The Lady Cox Rehabilitation Centre in Stepanakert, Nagorno Karabakh has become known as a Centre of Excellence in the region of the South Caucasus. The visionary Director, Vardan Tadevosyan, has transformed a previously dilapidated and bomb-damaged building, into a centre of hope and healing for people with a wide range of disability. This is a particularly significant achievement as the former Soviet Union had no concept of therapy for disabled people: they were generally just “warehoused” and would characteristically die within a couple of years from pressure sores, failure of the respiratory tract and other functions.

Vardan’s vision has been to give people with different forms of disability the best possible quality of life. Originally his patients were predominantly those with war injuries but now range from children with congenital disabilities such as cerebral palsy, through to elderly people with strokes, as well as those disabled from other forms of injury or disease.

Particularly significant is Vardan’s vision of dissemination of his philosophy of maximizing the quality of life for people with disabilities throughout the whole of the region. For example, people have visited the Centre from other countries such as Chechnya, Georgia, Ossetia and even Azerbaijan and they have taken back the vision and the concept of diverse therapies to their own people.

His therapeutic interventions range from tissue repair, physiotherapy, speech therapy, sports therapy, art and music therapies (with professional teachers enabling the patients to achieve remarkably high-quality wood carvings, pottery, paintings and music). There is also a state of the art hydrotherapy pool, donated by American supporters for patients with problems of spasticity."

The Lady Cox Rehabilitation Centre Facts

• Began in 1999 with 4 home-patients

• From 1999 to June 2008 has provided treatment to

• 675 out-patients (24,859 visits)

• 380 in patients (14,300 bed days) and

• 400 home-patients (6,647 home visits)

• Integrated day care center opened 2007 for special needs children and children with developmental disabilities up to 7 years old

 



 

From right to left: Vardan Tadevosyan, Director of the Lady Cox Rehabilitation Center, Baroness Caroline Cox, and Lee Miller