- Title: BELARUS/UKRAINE/FILE: Radiation continues to haunt Chernobyl children
- Date: 25th April 2011
- Summary: MOGILIEVSKAYA REGION, BELARUS (APRIL 20, 2011) (REUTERS) NURSES MASSAGING DISABLED CHILDREN IN 'CHERNOBYL CHILDREN INTERNATIONAL'-FUNDED ASYLUM FOR HANDICAPPED CHILDREN VARIOUS HEAD NURSE ELENA LYAPKO MASSAGING CHILD LYAPKO WHEELING DISABLED CHILD INTO ANOTHER ROOM CHILDREN IN WHEELCHAIRS NURSES WHEELING CHILDREN INTO ROOM TO WATCH TELEVISION CHILDREN IN WHEELCHAIRS
- Embargoed: 10th May 2011 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Belarus, Ukraine
- City:
- Country: Ukraine Belarus
- Topics: Disasters / Accidents / Natural catastrophes
- Reuters ID: LVABL7MI2WQA0KUOBN26LQXQEOJK
- Story Text: Over a quarter of a century since reactor number four at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded spreading radioactivity over Belarus and Russia and into parts of northern Europe, survivors of the disaster are still haunted by memories of a hurried evacuation and suffer from radiation-induced illnesses.
In the small town of Chist in Belarus, many residents are evacuees from the Chernobyl zone. They remember the lives they left behind and many still fight with lingering health problems.
Svetlana Kupchik, who was a young mother living in Pripyat, Ukraine - the town closest to the plant's site - at the time of the explosion, still remembers the evacuation. She, along with her mother and daughter left everything except for a few family mementos and were herded onto buses with other evacuees three days after the explosion.
Kupchik said she still suffers the consequences of the accident.
"Of course we caught a lot of radiation. My thyroid gland is enlarged. Well, I have no health. What did we leave there? We left everything there. You see, it's like leaving this apartment and just leave everything," Kupchik said, motioning to indicate her current apartment.
Pripyat, which was founded to house Chernobyl nuclear power plant workers, was a booming city with a population of 50,000 at the time of the accident.
Soviet authorities, fearing panic, waited 36 hours after the accident to evacuate Pripyat's citizens, ordering the residents to continue life as normal.
When the evacuation was finally started, residents were told not to take anything except for documents and maybe some food, as they could return to their homes in just a few days.
Now the city reminds of a ghost town at the centre of a largely uninhabited exclusion zone within a radius of 30 km (19 miles).
Kupchik says the hours she spent in Pripyat after the explosion were enough to turn her hair prematurely gray, and also affect her daughter, who was nine months old at the time.
"I lost my money, and half my life, and my health of course. My hair turned gray when I was twenty-five - completely gray. Now I color it two times a month, but when I was 25 I went completely gray. My daughter's hair didn't grow for a long time, very long time. Her hair didn't grow until she was four years old," Kupchik said.
The official immediate death toll from Chernobyl was 31, but many more died in the following years from radiation-related sicknesses like cancer in Ukraine and also in neighbouring Belarus.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) found an abnormally high rate of thyroid cancer in young people evacuated from the Chernobyl area, and studies showed that the radiation not only affects those who were directly exposed 25 years ago, but that radiation-induced illnesses were carried onto future generations.
At the asylum in rural southern Belarus privately funded by an Irish charity that works with people affected by the Chernobyl disaster, there are rooms of physically and mentally disabled children. State-run asylums have denied Reuters permission to film in their institutions.
Elena Lyapko, head nurse at the privately-funded children's asylum, has been working with the disabled children for eight years. She herself was hurt by the Chernobyl accident, and still deals with radiation-induced illnesses. She blamed the afteraffects of Chernobyl for the health problems her patients suffer.
"You look at these children and your heart just bleeds that this never had to happen. There are so many deformed children of course. So many. I think that it could have been avoided (so that there would be) fewer. I don't even know how to say it correctly. There are just so many sick children. I think that it's an afteraffect of Chernobyl," Lyapko said.
Valentin Chernyakevich, the Belarus director of Chernobyl Children's Project International who funds the asylum Lyapko works at, insisted that the dangers of Chernobyl's radioactive legacy had not lessened with time. He blamed Belarussian authorities for ignoring the issue.
"No one talks about this problem, it's hasn't gone away. It's exactly the same as it was 25 years ago because the repercussions of radiation don't go away in one day. And now the repercussions are going on to the next generation - to the children of those people who were affected 25 years ago. And this problem remains just as critical today as it was (25 years ago)," Chernyakevich said.
Chernobyl's total death toll and long-term health effects remain a subject of intense debate.
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.
Belarus is planning to begin construction of their first nuclear power plant in the fall of 2011, having signed a contract with Russian energy firm Rosatom on March 15 - mere days after the nuclear disaster at Japan's Fukushima.
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