Seventy-six-year-old widow Miletta Hakobyan’s children were supposed to support her in her old age, but that’s not how her life has worked out. Her son lost his job after the collapse of the Soviet Union and dropped out of society. Her daughter, a widow herself, lives near her mother in central Sevan, but her job barely pays enough for her and her only child to survive on. Hakobyan’s small pension covers utilities and food, but not medications.

Unfortunately, Hakobyan suffers from high blood pressure. She understands the complications of her condition, so she tries to take proper care of herself and not become a burden on her daughter. But the costs of the atenolol and captopril she relies on add up.

Fortunately, those medications are included in regular shipments that IRD sends to clinics in Armenia and distributes to the patients like Miletta free of charge. “We cannot overestimate the importance of assistance that we regularly receive from IRD for many years,” Rita Djamharyan, director of polyclinic of central Sevan, says. “What would our chronic patients do without IRD medicines?”

With the help of IRD partners Latter-Day Saints Charities, Lutheran World Relief, METAD, Medicines for Humanity, and others, IRD has shipped $43 million worth of medications and other medical supplies to Armenia since 1998.

“With IRD support,” Djamharyan continues, “We physicians feel ourselves effective because in these hard socio-economic times we do not have to rely solely on the scarce resources of our health care system, but are able to provide our patients with medicines. Miletta is one of those many patients who keep blessing IRD. And we do too.”