One of the principle barriers standing in the way of street children accessing their right under the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child to medical care is the fact that many of them lack the correct documentation. The "Propiska" is the stamp in the internal Russian passport which notifies doctors, nurses, police and the health authorities that the holder of the stamp is registered in a certain city, town or village. If the person seeks state medical care in a region outside his or her "Propiska" area, then he or she will be denied it.

Suburb

An ever increasing number of the children living on the streets of St Petersburg are not registered with the local authorities of that city. This makes state primary health and secondary care impossible for them.

Similarly, both street children and heroin users are subject to beatings and illegal detentions by certain police officers. Heroin users are often actively persecuted by police officers. Such persecution can be lawful when heroin users break Russian legal codes. However, drug users are subject to arbitrary arrest, police break new syringes and females are often exposed to sexual misconduct on the part of the police.

It is clear that there is the need for both knowledge transfer and field liasion when it comes to improving relationships between the police and the street children. This could be facilitated through a knowledge transfer and liasion process facilitated by a trained and experience probation officer who would train both social workers and police, drawing from his/her practical and theoretical experience. The probation officer would also educate the children on their rights under law and also suggest ways and means to lessen police hostility to them.

Based on the experiences of Médecins du Monde France, it is also necessary to provide the police with information on how to physically treat persons who may be infected with HIV, and on how to behave toward sex workers by drawing on anecdotes and role plays.

Finally, the establishment of a program which involves not only knowledge transfer, training and information flows, but of exchange would be of enormous benefit for doctors, nurses, social workers, public health officials and police in whose hands the task of improving the human rights both of the street children and the heroin users, lies.