On October 31, it was announced in the official website of the Russian Ministry of Defense that more than 500 soldiers of the Russian military base in Armenia have participated in the voluntary blood-giving event together with their families.
In particular, the press release mentioned that the average amount of blood donated by each person formed 400ml and that the latter will be passed to Armenian medical institutions after being subjected to laboratory studies.
We tried to find out whether the Armenian health facilities have received that blood.
Spokesman for the Ministry of Health Anahit Hayatyan told us she does not have any information about it and suggested that we turn to the Blood Center of Yerevan. However, neither this institution had any information about the blood donated by Russian soldiers (by 15-th of November).
It was possible to get some information from the Blood Center of Gyumri. They informed us that they have not received blood from the Russian military base. They added that they used to have such cooperation years ago but recently such events have not been organized.
We received the same information in response to our written enquiry. In particular, it was mentioned in the response that the blood center has not received large amount of blood from the military base or its personnel durig October 2016.