After Hetq Online's series of articles on the situation of families scavenging off Yerevan 's municipal landfill sites, the French Wing of Médecins Sans Frontières made the following announcement. Hetq Online approached a number of international and local organizations to step in but MSF-France was the only one to respond.

However, it should be pointed out that there are many more than the just these four families living off Yerevan 's rubbish dumps.

Here is MSF's response:

Since middle of March, MSF France prevention team has been conducting a socioeconomic assessment of 4 families living close to the garbage dump in the area of Adjapniak.

Half of those families came from the provinces to improve their economical situation in Erevan.

Their main income is presently relying on the garbage dump.

Most of them are not registered or have lost their registration.

They do not have the minimum conditions of life: no water, no electricity, no latrines, proximity to dogs etc. One month ago, one child fell down in dirty water into the canal besides the habitation and lost consciousness. Two weeks later, the same child was bitten by a scorpion.

Most of the children haven't birth certificates and none of them attend school mostly for material reasons (no shoes, no clothes, no books). They haven't visited a polyclinic for years.

The four families have been immediately included in the MSF prevention service.

Considering the closure of MSF programs at the end of June 04, it was decided to focus on medical issues (registrations in policlinics, medical check up of the all family including vaccination), and during this period, to get a more comprehensive picture of the families background and problems in order to look for potential handing over to the public services or other NGOs.

Anne Laure Roudier 
Prevention Programme coordinator