Turning the pages back... April 27, 2004 (04/24/05)

Turning the pages back...

April 27, 2004

In conjunction with the 18th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine, on April 27, 2004, the United Nations hosted a special screening of the Academy Award-winning documentary film "Chernobyl Heart." The 39-minute film, produced and directed by American documentary filmmaker Maryann DeLeo, was shot predominantly in Belarus in 2001-2003. The Academy Award-winning documentary follows a group of officials from the Chernobyl Children's Project International, a New York-based international humanitarian aid organization that has worked in Belarus for the past 12 years.

Speaking at the U.N. prior to the film's presentation, Ms. DeLeo told the audience that she contacted CCPI Founder and Executive Director Adi Roche in 2001 with the idea of making a documentary after having seen a photography exhibit on the subject at the U.N. headquarters building earlier that year. Ms. DeLeo said she remembered being astonished to learn that, while the number of children suffering from radiation-related illnesses was increasing, "international aid and attention has been progressively diminishing." Birth defects and cancer rates in the region have reportedly shot up over the past few years.

The film also featured the work of Dr. William Novick, a cardiac surgeon and founder and medical director of the International Children's Heart Foundation, who has traveled to the region on a number of occasions, performing surgery on children who have a condition that is referred to in the region as "Chornobyl heart." Speaking at the U.N., Dr. Novick said that in 2003 7,500 children in Belarus required the corrective surgery, while only 300 received it. In Ukraine, the film notes, there are 10,000 children on the waiting list for the surgical procedure, and only 2,500 will receive the operation. Many of the rest, Dr. Novick told the audience that greeted him with a standing ovation, will die while the waiting list will continue to grow.

"For my country, Chornobyl is not only a pain of the past, but a problem of the present and a challenge of the future," said Ambassador Valeriy Kuchinsky, Ukraine's permanent representative to the U.N., prior to the screening. "Unfortunately, with the passage of time - particularly since the closing of the Chornobyl station in 2000 - the problem of Chornobyl is gradually losing its momentum and is becoming, for some, yet another boring issue on the United Nations agenda."

"I think that the documentary film we are going to see tonight will speak to these people, especially children, much better and more effectively than hundreds of officials. We are very grateful to Ms. DeLeo and her team for the great work done in reflecting on today's consequences of the Chornobyl accident," Mr. Kuchinsky said.

Source: "Screening of Chornobyl documentary is centerpiece of U.N. commemoration," by Andrew Nynka, The Ukrainian Weekly, May 9, 2004, Vol. LXXII, No. 19.

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