Fifteen cases of hepatitis were registered in Vanadzor in June, ten of them from in the district of Taron-2. According to local doctors, the disease is seasonal, and such outbreaks occur in the spring and fall of every year. Robert Chilingaryan, head physician at the Vanadzor Infectious Hospital, explains that in these seasons, the human body's resistance to various diseases is lower, and the hospital inevitably admits a relatively unchanging number of hepatitis patients each year. He says that this season's outbreak is nothing out of the ordinary.

"Most of the patients with hepatitis in June were from our district," says Zemfira Margaryan, the director of Vanadzor's Polyclinic # 5, which serves Taron-2, noting that there have been fewer cases in recent years. It is mostly school-age children who become infected with the hepatitis virus. Parents suspect that the disease is spread through their drinking water. After it rains, the water in the faucets of apartment buildings in Vanadzor turns yellow.

"The infected children were far from each other they; they had no contact. It's suspicious, too, that unrelated children caught the infection," says Anahit Tumanyan, the mother of three-year-old Valeria Darbinyan. She is sure that the drinking water in the Taron-2 district is responsible.

"We can't use water without boiling it first," Laura Yeghikyan, another resident of Taron-2, complains. Her sixteen-year-old son, Vahe Aghadjanyan, was also hospitalized with hepatitis.

Dr. Chilingaryan says that the patients are all in satisfactory condition now: "The illness is taking its normal course; only one patient had complications." He believes that the outbreak of the disease in one area is no accident, since there are certain problems there, and doesn't rule out the possibility that it can be contracted through the water.

The Lori Regional Inspection of the State Center for Control and Prevention of Epidemics conducted various tests, concluding that there was no danger of an epidemic. Tests of the drinking water revealed no abnormality. According to the head of the Inspection, Karine Mirzoyan, if the water were to blame, then a month before the hepatitis outbreak, residents would have suffered digestive complaints, but no such cases were registered.

Edward Vahanyan, director of the Vanadzor water-supply company, rules out drinking water as the cause, since, he says, "The water flows from the springs and is drinkable."

Tests of local food haven't pointed to any definite conclusion, either. Karine Mirzoyan maintains that the disease was spread through contact. "There were neighbors, brothers, children from families in contact with each other, and students from School # 30 among the patients."

"Our social, housing, and sanitary conditions are such that one way or another we will have similar outbreaks again," Robert Chilingaryan shares his worries with us. The Vanadzor polyclinics are now working to identify new cases, which could appear at ant time, since the incubation period of the hepatitis virus is 21 days.