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A medical forensic examination is to be performed after the death case of a homeless man in Yerevan, whose identity has already been established, Panorama.am learn from the Investigative Committee.

According to surfaced reports, the man, 38, lived in the street and was addicted to alcohol. Ahead of the winter and expected cold weather, representatives of Hans Christian Kofoed Charitable Foundation of Denmark tour the Yerevan streets in the evening hours twice or three times in a week to identify and take care of the homeless people.   

Shavarsh Khachatryan, head of the Foundation informed 880 homeless are registered in Yerevan and Armenian regions. 300 of them have diseases that rule out their transfer to the Homeless center.

“The Law on Social Protection enables us to take people to the Homeless center as long as they are homeless and at the same time do not suffer from mental diseases, Hepatitis C, tuberculosis, skin diseases. The matter is still open. We reveal people with psychiatric disorders. After 20-21 days spent in Psychiatric centers they are again found in the streets,” the head of the Foundation explained.

Khachatryan informed a distribution center was to be opened on past July 1 with psychiatrists and doctors of narrow specialization to work there, where homeless people with the above-mentioned diseases were to live. However, the opening of the center was cancelled due to the lack of budget resources. The new date is January 1 2017 and Khachatryan is not sure whether the center will come into reality.

Up to 100 homeless people can live at Hans Christian Kofoed Charitable Foundation. Currently 98 people – 39 women and 59 men – reside in the center. The number decreases during the summer months. People with disabilities are then transferred to Care centers and to Psychiatric centers in case mental disorders are revealed.

To our interlocutor, 749 people have been the beneficiaries of the Foundation since December 23, 2011 with most of them having families and children. They became homeless due to family problems as well as certain addictions.

“The primary goal of our Foundation is to reconcile those people with their family members,” Khachatryan said, also referring to sad cases when children refused to take care of the parents.

“We have a 58-year-old woman who suffers from cancer. She has two daughters and a son from two different husbands. We called her children, informed about her situation, asking for the possibility to take care in her last days, yet they refused,” Khachatryan remembered.