Updated 05 March 2003, 16.59

This baby was abandoned

There was a little girl who had been bought to the hospital the day before we visited. The staff thought she was about six months old, but didn't know for sure, they didn't know what her name was.

They say she was always shaking and the staff thought that was because she had been born to a mother who was either a drug addict or an alcoholic. They thought this would probably affect her for the rest of her life.

We wanted to go and meet some children who weren't being looked after so we went to the cellar underneath a huge block of flats in the middle of the city.

Dirty and scary

We had to be very careful climbing down through a very small door and some very steep stairs to the cellar because if anyone had seen us they would have known that children were living there and they might have tried to get rid of them.

No one knows this boy's name

The ceiling in the cellar was very low and we had to bend down the whole time we were there. It was filthy dirty, it smelt, and there was rubbish all over the floor. There was a pile of blankets in a corner, which the three boys shared as a bed.

Maxim, Roma and Jura have lived there for a month. They were very proud of it although it must have been a horrible place to live and very scary at nighttime.

Kids rely on charity

There is no government help for children like this and they rely on help from charities, like Children in Crisis, who provide food, clothes and support for the children that no one else cares about.