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On April 13, 2016, the General Jurisdiction Court of Armavir Marz (Region) held the next-in-turn court hearing on the case of A. Petrosyan, doctor at Armavir Medical Center. She was charged under Article 130(2) (non-fulfillment or improper fulfillment of professional duties by medical and support personnel, which caused through negligence the patient’s death) of the RA Criminal Code.

Note that by the Court ruling, the 2 criminal cases with defendant A. Petrosyan are examined under the same proceedings.

The interests of the successors to young Karine Hovhannisyan are protected by Ani Chatinyan, lawyer  at Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor.

At the hearing, the Court resumed the questioning of the witnesses summoned under the case of E. Amirkhanyan’s death.

Summoned expert G. Harutyunyan mentioned that defendant A. Petrosyan had not taken the necessary actions that would make it possible to save the patient’s life. In particular, given that at admittance to the hospital K. Hovhannisyan’s condition was estimated to be close to grave, demonstrated by the data on the child’s objective conditions found in the patient’s medical records, and given the known anamnestic data on the progress of the child’s disease through repeated diarrhea, vomiting and high temperature, and the comparison of such data with the child’s objective condition indicative of the dehydration hypovolemic shock suffered by the child and also the initial diagnoses of “Acute intestinal infection, gastroenterocolitis”, K. Hovhannisyan should have been hospitalized to the intensive care unit.

However, K. Hovhannisyan was not transferred to the intensive care unit in time; instead, she was admitted to the contagious isolation ward where necessary medical examinations were not performed and relevant measures were not taken to prevent dehydration of the child.

During the questioning of the expert, the defendant asked him/her questions and upon hearing the answers attempted by all means to justify her actions by stating that there was no need to transfer K. Hovhannisyan to the intensive care unit, she suffered no shock, and no one could predict that she might go into shock. However, the expert reiterated that with the anamnestic data above the child should have been hospitalized to the intensive care unit, which could have prevented further complications.

Both the defendant, and other health providers at Armavir Medical Center referred to the large number of patients (around 800 patients annually) treated at the Medical Center stating that they were all treated by the same methodology, and there had been no complications so far.

At the hearing, the Court also questioned E. Amirkhanyan’s mother.

At the next hearing, the Court will question defendant A. Petrosyan and examine the evidence of the case.

The next court hearing is scheduled for April 29, 2016, at 11:30 am.