At Thursday's Cabinet session, the government allocated $75 thousand from this year's budget to the Ministry of Health of Armenia in order to provide funding for DNA testing.

In the explanation of the respective decision, it is noted that the DNA of the bodies and remains of numerous Armenian soldiers who dies as a result of the 44-day Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) war in the fall of 2020 were tested, from October 2020 to 2022, at the Department of Molecular Genetics Examinations of the Scientific-Practical Center of Forensic Medicine of Armenia, during which many bodies and remains were identified.

One hundred bone samples at the aforesaid center were sent to the International Commission for Missing Persons (ICMP) in the Netherlands for DNA testing. The respective funding was provided by USAID.

But there are still certain transformed bone tissues from which it is not possible to separate the DNA characteristics suitable for the identification of several fallen soldiers. To this end, it became necessary to send another 50 bone tissue test samples to the Netherlands, to the respective DNA testing laboratory of the ICMP, to separate the DNA from the damaged bone tissue and obtain a complete genetic profile.

The aforesaid requires $75,000. And for this purpose, it was necessary to allocate 31,125,000 drams from the reserve fund of the government of Armenia to the Ministry of Health.