How a medical mission connected one student’s future to Armenia

I was born and raised in Maryland, thousands of miles from Armenia, but like so many in the diaspora, the homeland has always lived in me. As I’ve grown older and thought more seriously about what it means to carry that homeland with me, I’ve found myself asking how the life and career I am building can contribute to its future. Now, in my final year of medical school, I have found my calling in ophthalmology, and this September, I had the opportunity to bring these two important parts of my life together as a medical student observer on the Armenian EyeCare Project’s (AECP) annual medical mission trip. The desire to work for my people, both locally and in the homeland, has been a longstanding one. For many years, I have been a proud member of Washington D.C.’s AYF-YOARF and Homenetmen chapters. It was largely through these organizations that I learned to take the hayrenasirutyun first cultivated at home and turn it into work. Medical school, meanwhile, gave me the space to develop my professional identity and think deeply about the kind of physician I hope to become. But even as that vision took shape, whatever future I imagined for myself, I knew my homeland would somehow have to be part of it. AECP was founded in 1992 by Armenian-American ophthalmologist Dr. Roger Ohanesian and began in response to an appeal from Armenia for help addressing an urgent need for eye care in the aftermath of the 1988 earthquake and the First Artsakh War, compounded by severe shortages of medications, medical equipment and specialists. What started with American ophthalmologists traveling to Armenia to treat patients and teach physicians has grown into something much larger: a decades-long effort to build a sustainable eye-care system within Armenia itself. AECP's mission is to eliminate preventable blindness and make quality eye care accessible throughout the country, and it pursues that mission through direct patient care, medical education and training, research, and public education. Over the past three decades, AECP reports screening more than 500,000 patients, performing more than 35,000 sight-saving surgeries and training more than 6,000 physicians. It has brought millions of dollars in ophthalmic equipment and supplies to Armenia, trained Armenian ophthalmologists in subspecialty fellowships in the United States and supported the development of subspecialty clinics, regional centers and programs devoted to preventing childhood blindness. Perhaps its most recognizable project is its Mobile Eye Hospital — a 14-ton surgical and examination facility on wheels that has traveled throughout Armenia since 2003, bringing eye examinations, laser treatments and surgery to communities far from Yerevan. But what struck me most about AECP was not any one statistic. It was the philosophy behind the work. Rather than simply bringing American ophthalmologists to Armenia to treat patients , AECP invests in Armenian physicians, infrastructure and communities so that high-quality eye care can increasingly be delivered by Armenians, to Armenians, throughout Armenia. During this year’s mission, I had the opportunity to learn from AECP Vice President and founding board member Dr. John Hovanesian, UCLA medical retina specialist Dr. Moritz Pettenkofer and University of Toronto vitreoretinal surgeon Dr. Gareth Mercer. Watching them work alongside ophthalmologists from Armenia, offering their expertise while supporting the physicians already caring for these communities, I began to imagine myself on the other side of the room. I want to be the ophthalmologist taking these histories, holding patients’ hands, offering a second opinion or a word of reassurance, and giving Armenian colleagues another set of eyes when they need it. In these physicians, I saw a version of my future that I had never quite known how to imagine. For years, I have been fortunate to find ways to turn my love for my people into action through cultural preservation, community work and advocacy in D.C. and across the East Coast. Now, I see an additional avenue of service to my homeland and people that excites me. We had the chance to meet many of the wonderful ophthalmologists in Armenia. At the Malayan Ophthalmological Center, we met Dr. Anna Hovakimyan, an AECP fellow and lead specialist of the Cornea-Uveitis Clinic whose own career reflects AECP’s investment in Armenian physicians. Selected as an AECP scholar in 1999, she completed a fellowship at UCSF’s Francis I. Proctor Foundation before returning to Armenia, where she has helped build cornea and uveitis subspecialty care at Malayan. Watching her work was remarkable. Patient after patient entered her clinic, and Dr. Hovakimyan knew their histories without so much as glancing at a chart. She greeted them warmly — “jan” seemingly never far from her lips — before discussing her assessments and plans with us. The rhythm of the clinic was different from what I was accustomed to in the United States, but she knew her patients like the back of her hand. That same warmth contained in a simple “jan” seemed to follow us everywhere we went. In Yeghvard, Spitak, Artashat, Yerevan and Gyumri, we were welcomed with tables overflowing with the sweet fruits of the land, pastries, sandwiches, champagne and the bitter Armenian coffee that somehow tastes like the history behind it. There were midday khorovats lunches, endless toasts and conversations that stretched far beyond ophthalmology. It was hospitality in the way Armenians seem to know best — abundant, insistent and full of love. It was moving to encounter these expressions of Armenian hospitality everywhere we went because they felt like an ode to our spirit as a people. We work hard, we honor our traditions, and we cling tightly to one another. And perhaps that is why the loss that accompanied this trip felt so heavy: when a people hold so tightly to one another, to their history and to their homeland, absence is felt just as deeply. It was my first time back in Armenia since the displacement of the Armenians of Artsakh, a place I had long loved from afar but never had the chance to see. On Sept. 27, six years after the start of the 44-Day War, I visited Yerablur Military Pantheon to pay my respects to the brave Armenian soldiers buried there. Standing among their graves, I was reminded, again, that loving a homeland means not only carrying its beauty and grief, but also finding ways to contribute to its future. If I am fortunate enough to match into ophthalmology, I hope this mission was only the beginning of my relationship with the Armenian EyeCare Project. It is my promise to myself that I will return as an ophthalmologist ready to contribute what I have learned and help carry this work forward. To be Armenian is a privilege, and so is the responsibility that comes with it. We are fortunate to carry the weight of our history because it grounds us, gives us purpose and asks something of us in return. It allows us to grieve deeply, but also to dream, to build and to become the best versions of ourselves in service of something greater. For our Hayastan, for our Ararat, for our Artsakh, I hope to spend my life doing my part.

How a medical mission connected one student’s future to Armenia

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Kristine Antanesian

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Kristine Antanesian

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