Armenia’s unique salt mine asthma clinic faces closure as funds dry up

Opened in 1987, Armenia’s Republican Centre of Speleotherapy has, for decades, welcomed patients with respiratory illnesses into tunnels carved deep into rock salt, where the mineral‑rich underground air is believed to help ease conditions such as asthma and bronchitis.

Once treating more than 300 people a year, the 4,000‑square‑metre facility now reportedly sees only around 50 patients annually after losing state funding in 2019–2020, leaving its future in doubt.

Armenian health authorities say spending has shifted towards treatments backed by stronger scientific evidence and aimed at more life‑threatening diseases, while doctors at the centre insist that speleotherapy should be viewed as a complementary therapy rather than a replacement for conventional medicine.

For long‑time visitors such as Armen Stepanyan, who has travelled from Kemerovo in Russia for over a decade, the mine remains a rare source of relief. "I tried everything, sanatoriums, treatments, nothing helped," he said. "Here I felt improvement after the first course."

Supporters see the clinic as part of Armenia’s broader tradition of natural healing, and officials are now exploring private investment to preserve the site, possibly as a research or medical‑tourism centre.