YEREVAN, DECEMBER 13, NOYAN TAPAN. In the 10 months of 2006, the First Aid CJSC of Yerevan Mayor's Office has registered 141.9 thousand calls, which exceeds the index of the same period of previous year by 10 thousand. As company Director Artyom Petrosian said in his interview to Noyan Tapan correspondent, the increase of the number of calls is conditioned by not sickness rate, but mainly by growth of the number of Yerevan's population. In his words, 37 ambulance brigades provide first aid to Yerevan residents every day, including professional pediatrics, psychiatrical and other aid. In total, the company has 45 cars, 6 out of which have been purchased this year. The latters are new Sobol cars, which, in A.Petrosian's words, are intended for big cities. Besides, the Furst Aid stopped exploitation of old Yeraz and Raf cars in November this year. "As currently the company has no problem of leading the doctor to patient's house, so activities aimed at raising the quality of rendered medical services will be done soon," A.Petrosian said. In this respect in 2007 the company plans to purchase two new cars with new medical equipments from Nizhni Novgorod's Lingas trade and industrial company. A.Petrosian said that allocations given from state budget to the Armenian first aid system grow year by year. Thus, in 2006 this sum amounted to 1 bln 132 mln 452 thousand drams (about 3 mln USD), while in 2007 it is envisaged to allocate about 1 bln 277 mln 880 thousand drams. He said that increase of allocations from the state budget will enable next year to raise the salaries of doctors and nurses by about 25%. Currently their average salary makes about 32000 and 26000 drams, respectively.

---