![]() In 2004, the Swiss Medical Weekly published his findings, which showed that cardiovascular problems among children living in areas with high concentrations of radioactivity in the food source (specifically dairy and meat) were “significantly more frequent” than those that lived in areas of Belarus where concentrations of cesium were considered moderate or low. His research showed a direct relationship between elevated concentrations of cesium and heart disease. A pathologist from Belarus, Bandazheuski has studied the levels of Cesium-137 in the organs of children living in contamination areas in the fallout region. He was an outgoing but serious man with a cordial demeanor. Yuri Bandazheuski, who we met with on a snowy day at the hospital in Ivankiv. I need clothes, but I don’t have the means.”īoth these patients, as well as some doctors that we met, call the meager allotment the victims receive “coffin money” - meaning it is only enough to pay for their burial.Īnother such story involved Dr. “Of course I’m angry…I need an apartment, I have to pay for an apartment,” she said. We asked the first patient if she was angry about her situation. They told us they receive a mere 150 hryvna (about $20) a month from the Ukrainian government now to pay for food, medicine and the means to live. ![]() When the 30-km “Exclusion Zone” was created after the meltdown, they were forced to relocate. At the same hospital, we talked to two patients, both elderly women, who had lived near the power plant when the disaster happened and have experienced a myriad of health problems since. ![]() The health of people in heavily contaminated areas was, and continues to be, a problem. She later developed cancer in several places across her upper body, including breast cancer, which eventually took her life. She recounted the sad tale of a nurse who had personally carried the liquidators in her arms after they were brought in, and then discovered that the liquidators were highly radioactive themselves. Her request was met with a firm warning to return to work and stop arousing suspicion. She also told us about trying to get access to a supply of potassium iodide pills in the first days after the accident, thinking that it might help her patients who had been exposed to high concentrations of radioactive iodine-131. She explained that the Soviet government told hospital staff nothing about the accident and simply instructed them to clear the hospital of existing patients, never warning that their new patients would be brought in via contaminated vehicles, wearing contaminated clothes, and be contaminated themselves with the radioactive elements. Even doctors were embarrassed to show us the shabby environment they work in, and one stopped to apologize for its condition.Īt the hospital, we met with a doctor who had been working the night of (and the weeks following) the explosion at Chernobyl. An ill patient was rushed past us on a makeshift stretcher that looked to be a century old. Ragged, dormitory-style beds were packed six or eight to a room, uncomfortable to look at and likely worse to rest in. The hospital building was nothing more than a tattered apartment building of broken brick, a hovel when viewed from the outside and little better on the inside. In one visit, we traveled to a hospital in Ivankiv, just outside the Exclusion Zone, where first responders were brought after fighting the radioactive fires at Chernobyl 25 years ago. Several of the people we interviewed for Miles O’Brien’s tape report, “Revisiting Chernobyl: a Nuclear Disaster Site of Epic Proportions,” had such courageous tales that it was impossible to tell them in one short news piece. Later, crews came in to destroy valuables (TV’s and the like) to insure no one would come back to take things that might slowly kill them.Ĭhernobyl’s lasting impacts are not easy to package into a single story. People who lived there – 49,000 in all – were told to leave – but not given any indication it was forever. It was built as a shining example of the “Life Soviet” in the mid-seventies – but had to be evacuated after the explosion in Reactor #4 on April 26, 1986. Scene from the former day care facility in the town of Pripyat – the company town for the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
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