Santé Arménie
Santé Arménie is a non-profit French-Armenian association founded in 2020 under the aegis of the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU France), on the initiative of a group of health professionals led by Prof. Arsène Mekinian.
Born in the context of the Covid-19 health crisis and the Artsakh war, the association first organised emergency medical and paramedical missions. Its work then took on a longer-term aim: contributing to the development of the Armenian health system through care, training, clinical research and French-Armenian institutional cooperation.
Arsène Mekinian is the founder and chair of Santé Arménie.
Care and development of health facilities
Santé Arménie develops programmes meant to improve access to care, in particular outside Yerevan.
Its work includes mobile general practice units, neuro-orthopaedic rehabilitation programmes, psychiatry and psychotraumatology activities, and support for the development of new facilities and medical specialties.
The association states that it has mobilised more than 200 volunteers, built a team of 40 employees in Armenia taking part in particular in the delivery of free care, and organised 90 missions in Armenia and Artsakh.
Training and transfer of expertise
Medical training is one of the main lines of the programme.
Santé Arménie organises multidisciplinary team meetings, distance teaching, lectures, practical training and observation placements in France, so as to foster exchanges between Armenian and European health professionals.
An online medical academy has also been developed for Armenian students and health professionals.
The association also takes part in the adaptation, translation and distribution in Armenian of La Revue du Praticien, so as to make up-to-date medical content available in the Armenian language.
Clinical research and scientific cooperation
Santé Arménie develops an activity meant to give clinical and academic research in Armenia a lasting structure.
This work led in particular to the creation in Yerevan of the French-Armenian Academic Research Organisation (FAARO) and of a biological resource centre, or biobank.
FAARO supports Armenian teams in their participation in international registries and collaborations, in particular in cardiology, systemic sclerosis, inflammatory diseases and myelodysplastic syndromes.
The biobank, set up in 2023, collects biological samples from patients included in several medical registries. These infrastructures are meant to allow the development of cohorts, translational projects and clinical studies conducted with Armenian and international teams.
Medical and institutional cooperation
Beyond one-off missions, Santé Arménie seeks to develop lasting cooperation between professionals, health establishments, universities and French and Armenian institutions.
These collaborations concern care, training, research and the organisation of the health system. They follow a logic of transfer of skills and of development of local medical and scientific capacity.
In February 2026, Santé Arménie organised with the embassy of the Republic of Armenia in France a meeting devoted to the changes and reforms of the Armenian health system, bringing together institutional representatives and health professionals.
Cooperation set in the long term
The aim of Santé Arménie is not to substitute outside expertise for Armenian medical structures, but to build lasting local capacity: to train, to develop teams and infrastructure, to give research a structure and to foster the integration of Armenian professionals into international scientific networks.