Gayane Melkumyan. “Each of us must fight to the best of our ability against the effects of the pandemic, the effects of war.”

“We can all take action in an emergency. Each of us must do our best to fight the pandemic of war,” said Gayane Melkumyan, a member of the Jrvezh community council in the Kotayk region, who has worked as a nurse at the community polyclinic for many years. She says that my opportunity is to talk to people, to inform them, to warn them, to give them the idea that we should protect ourselves, our relatives, what I have done, I continue to this day.

During the difficult days of the war, Gayane, together with all the residents of the community, helped the troubled compatriots to the best of their ability. Gayane actively worked with the people of Artsakh who found refuge in Jrvezh.

The young people of the community brought essential goods to Artsakh.

Regarding the growth of the pandemic, she says, she has always talked to people, informed them, warned them, explained that we must all protect ourselves and our relatives. As a nurse from the very beginning, when the first cases of coronavirus were registered in Armenia, she organized meetings with school teachers, students, as well as with community members and residents, talking about the dangers, risks, and ways to protect against Covid-19.

Gayane informed that many people in their community got sick, and there were many deaths, one of her relatives also died. She says that during this year not everyone learned to live with Covid. For a considerable part of the people it became commonplace, they just started to ignore it.

For Gayane, Covid has been a constant topic in every conversation for the past year and there is not a single meeting, a conversation during which she does not talk about it for at least five minutes. She thinks that people constantly talk about the same problem when the situation is incomprehensible to them or they are in a state of stress, in both cases it is necessary to talk to them and explain.

– My house is at the end of the village, my place of work is at the beginning of the village. I go all that way every day talking to people, answering their many questions, urging them to see a doctor in time.

The conversation ends with optimism.

– The year was hard and we also had a lot of losses, but I am sure everything will be fine…

Full text in Armenian