EDITORIAL: All of Chornobyl's children (04/20/03)

EDITORIAL

All of Chornobyl's children

Fate decreed that the unprecedented accident at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant would take place just before Easter 1986 according to the Julian calendar. Ukrainians worldwide saw their pre-Easter feelings of hope and renewal dashed by the latest calamity to strike their native land. Thus, our Easter issue of 1986 was full of news about the disaster that began on April 26, and our community's response to it: religious services, vigils, protests, attempts to provide help to the victims in Ukraine.

All this, mind you, was happening at the same time that Soviet authorities were still trying to cover up the true dimensions of Chornobyl, for even as news of the nuclear accident had leaked out, despite the Soviets' best attempts to hide it from the world, its officials were on record as telling the world - including the people most directly affected - that everything was under control, that the USSR did not need outside assistance, that life was normal ... A remarkable conversation occurred nine days after the disaster, on May 5,1986, with a diplomat from the Ukrainian SSR's Mission to the United Nations, whose exact words were: "The main problems are solved ... we don't need any help." That same diplomat recounted a May 1 telephone conversation with his daughter in Kyiv and underlined her words: "There is no catastrophe here ..."

The reality then was so unreal that it is almost hard to believe now - 17 years later; indeed, for younger generations of Ukrainian Americans, it must be hard to comprehend what those days were like. And yet, everyone knows what "Chornobyl" denotes.

In this issue readers will notice an article about the Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund's campaign to reduce children's mortality due to cardiac defects. The story notes that birth defects have doubled since the Chornobyl disaster and chromosome damage has increased seven-fold. Research has shown a dramatic increase in thyroid cancer among children - children who were infants or toddlers at the time of the accident; as well as an increase in thyroid autoimmune disease. Dr. Michael J. Christensen of the USAID-funded Chornobyl Childhood Illness Program reported in September 2002 that "More than 100,000 adolescents (age 11-18) are at risk for developing thyroid cancer and acute psychological difficulties as a result of initial exposure and continued living in the Chornobyl-contaminated region of Ukraine." The incidence of leukemia also has grown, and a link to Chornobyl has been established by the latest research of Dr. Andrey Noshchenko and his colleagues (described in papers released in 2001 and 2002). And, researchers caution that Chornobyl's effects are still being determined.

Numerous studies have shown that these effects are exacerbated by generally poor health care. A United Nations-commissioned report released just over a year ago concluded that a fundamental shift is needed in the way assistance is delivered to the people still suffering from Chornobyl. It called for, among other things, special attention to be paid to the lifetime needs of people who were infants or children at the time of the accident, and noted that the "Emergency Phase" of the response to the Chornobyl accident, which focused on containment, relocation and direct welfare, must now be replaced by a "Recovery Phase" that should emphasize basic health services, economic development, ecological measures and international research on a series of unresolved health questions that face the population as a whole.

Thus, the Chornobyl catastrophe is still with us today. And our common goal today must be to save not only the generations already born at the time of the Chornobyl accident, but succeeding generations - all of whom are suffering due to a collapsing health care system. For they all are, in effect, the children of Chornobyl.

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