Better noncommunicable disease outcomes: challenges and opportunities for health systems. Armenia country assessment (2017)

Like many countries Armenia is facing a growing noncommunicable disease (NCD) burden. This report examines the opportunities and challenges for Armenia to accelerate improvement in cardiovascular and diabetes outcomes.

Significant progress on population-level prevention is required and efforts and enforcement modalities for alcohol and tobacco control could be stepped up. Obesity is a growing challenge yet interventions to improve diet and physical activity are limited.

A multisectoral platform backed up by targets, monitoring and accountability would help overcome sectoral segmentation in the public administration. Organization of general practitioner services create a good platform for the detection and management of NCDs, although fragmentation of patient care between providers needs to be overcome. Nurses could be better used throughout the system particularly in counselling and management of patients with chronic conditions.

Public spending on health care is relatively low. Increasing health care spending requires raising more funds to be spent on health services, for example through earmarked taxes, and freeing up resources through more efficient and effective use of existing resource.