Members of the Children of Chernobyl Relief Fund took advantage of a recent oncology conference in Kyiv to outline the programs the agency has been on since 1989.
ia on Oct. 17 and outline the programs their nonprofit agency has been working toward since 1989.
Of concern, they say, is the increasing number of birth defects in newborns surfacing across the country – and particularly in the northern oblasts and areas of Belarus most affected by radiation following the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
“The number of children born in Ukraine with heart defects has risen from an average of 4,000 per year to 6,000 per year since the Chernobyl disaster,” fund Executive Director Alexander Kuzma said. “There have also been a number of studies showing a doubling in the number of all kinds of birth defects in Ukraine and Belarus in general: defects with telltale signs of being radiation-related, including extra digits, missing digits, deformed or missing limbs and cleft palates.”
While the world medical bodies and international organizations remain divided over the extent of the health impacts of the Chernobyl disaster, Kuzma said that specific reports, including a 1994 University of Hiroshima study led by Dr. Yukio Sato, have provided a more solid base for qualification.
“From an early period, 1992 and 1993, we were concerned with what we saw as a rise in birth defects,” Kuzma said. “We were convinced that there was a substantial effect from Chernobyl after seeing the reports from Japan and from Israel…and there is a lot of anecdotal evidence as well.”
The fund’s president, Zenon Matkiwsky, said that the organization is working toward equipping hospitals and training doctors to operate on newborns with birth defects, including those born with heart problems. Matkiwsky said that until this year Dr. Illya Yemets of the Amosov Institute of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery in Kyiv was one of the only physicians in Ukraine able to perform open-heart surgery on infants. Doctors perform as many as 800 such surgeries each year. Fund officials said that the situation is improving, due to the donation of a $65,000 heart-lung machine to the Hospital for Mothers and Children in Lviv and the training of additional physicians, including Lviv’s Dr. Roman Kovalsky.
Fulbright student and fund volunteer Olenka Welhasch said the fund is especially concerned with heart defects because the problem receives insufficient attention. She said that thyroid cancer, whose incidence has been linked to Chernobyl by organizations including the International Atomic Energy Agency, remain an ongoing concern.
“Thyroid is certainly a big problem. At the oncology conference, the physicians were saying the biggest problem now is that doctors aren’t performing enough early screening tests or urging people to have biopsies early enough. The cancer is very curable if caught in the early stages,” Welhasch said. “But we know there is a rise in the number of cases of cardiac defects – and that cardiac surgery requires expensive equipment and training to develop.”
The fund will soon receive additional exposure. On hand for the Oct. 17 presentation was Ike MacFadden, a producer with the U.S.-based Teaching Learning Network, which had been filming in Ukraine as part of a series of documentaries on nonprofit organizations. The crew visited hospitals in Kyiv and Lviv as well as in Lutsk and Rivne.
MacFadden said one reason the network chose to shoot an episode on CCRF was to provide an update on Chernobyl developments for an American public whose attention can be easily distracted by the sheer number of disasters around the world. As for his approach to filming in Ukraine, MacFadden said, it was straightforward, with his crew letting the subjects and the subject matter do the talking.
“This is one of those stories that are so great that it would be hard to mess up,” he said. “So long as you get out of the way and let the people tell their own stories: the children and the doctors.”
The Teaching Learning Network’s half-hour documentary on CCRF is due to air on the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States in January.
