UKRAINE: Red Cross says there are continuing high levels of thyroid cancer registered in village testing centres where many of Chernobyl evacuees still live

Record ID: 215805

  • Title: UKRAINE: Red Cross says there are continuing high levels of thyroid cancer registered in village testing centres where many of Chernobyl evacuees still live
  • Date: 21st April 2011
  • Summary: MORE OF ABANDONED FLATS VARIOUS OF MURAL IN LOBBY OF ABANDONED FLATS REACTOR SEEN RISING ABOVE BLOCKS OF ABANDONED FLATS
  • Embargoed: 6th May 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Ukraine, Ukraine
  • Country: Ukraine
  • Topics: Disasters / Accidents / Natural catastrophes,Health
  • Reuters ID: LVA6Y433MP44YLEKOEY5N2EAZZWG
  • Story Text: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has found an abnormally high rate of thyroid cancer in young people evacuated from the Chernobyl area after the world's worst nuclear accident on April 26, 1986.
    A queue of patients waits at the local clinic in the village of Ukrainka, to be tested for any signs of thyroid cancer, which is prevalent here but rare elsewhere in the world.
    Ukrainka is in Ukraine's Zhitomyr region, 100 km from the 'Zone' around Chernobyl, but it was in the path of the radioactive cloud sent into the atmosphere after explosions at the plant's Reactor Four. The cloud spread radioactive iodine, with an 'half life' of eight days, during which period of time it contaminated a wide area, including parts of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.
    The village also provided a haven for those who fled from the area of the accident. Many of the people who evacuated from the town of Pripyat, which bore the worst of the contamination, were evauacted to the Zhitomyr region and some still live in Ukrainka.
    Some patients have come to the clinics to be checked for the first time in the 25 years since the nuclear accident, say the ICRC.
    In the Ukrainka clinic Doctor Vasyl Berezhny checks patients' thyroid glands, running an ultrasound probe across their necks and studying the results carefully on his screen.
    The residents most at risk are the young - those who were new-born, children and teenagers on the day of the disaster, explained ICRC Europe's Communications manager Joe Lowry.
    "What they're doing is checking people for signs of thyroid abnormalities which could lead to thyroid cancer, a very aggressive form of cancer, rare in the rest of the world but very prevalent here, which affects mainly people who were born in 1986 or who were aged up to about 20 on the day of the disaster," he said.
    The ICRC's Ukrainian office has supplied the mobile ultrasound diagnostic equipment here in Ukrainka and runs seven similar units in remote rural areas of Ukraine, Belarus and one part of Russia, affected by nuclear contamination from Chernobyl and its long-term legacy.
    The key to saving lives of people at risk of developing thyroid cancer is regular checks and early detection said Lowry.
    The incidence of cancer in the region is still high 25 years after the Chernobyl accident, says the ICRC, which has checked 1.5 million people in the affected areas, over the past 20 years.
    "Every year we are finding that 200 new cases of thyroid cancer through our laboratories. Thankfully in the whole time this programme has been running only two people have died because they were diagnosed quite late, but more worryingly, about one in two people that come here shows some pre-cancerous condition or some abnormality with their thyroid which could go on to become fully-fledged cancer," he said.
    These medical checks will be continued each year, say the ICRC, to build up a long-term picture of thyroid cancer incidence in areas affected by Chernobyl and could help deal with the legacy of this year's Fukushima nuclear accident.
    "It's very relevant now that we are putting the spotlight on this programme at the same time that we have a nuclear disaster in Japan - the country where one thought the technology and the building technology would have made a nuclear accident impossible - and it shows that we can never say there will never be another Chernobyl or there will never be anotjher Fukushima. It's very important that there are well-trained teams like the Red Cross who can help people long term, with the long-lasting effects of a nuclear disaster," said Joe Lowry.
    Chernobyl has remained the benchmark for nuclear accidents.
    On April 12 Japan raised the severity rating at its Fukushima plant to seven, the same level as that of Chernobyl.
    Chernobyl's total death toll and long-term health effects remain a subject of intense debate.
    The official immediate death toll from Chernobyl was 31, but many more died of radiation-related sicknesses such as cancer, many of them in neighbouring Belarus.
    Pripyat, the town closest to the site, is now an eerie ghost town at the centre of a largely uninhabited exclusion zone within a radius of 30 km (19 miles).
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