Doctors of Chernobyl

Nila Bandarenko from Zhytomir has her third operation on her thyroid gland. Surgeon Kommissarenko says after her second operation ‘microscopic particles of the cancer got into her blood vessels and the cancer started growing there”. Bandarenko also has kidney cancer. Ukraine has an explosion of thyroid cancer. The Kiev Institute of Endocrinology saw a sharp increase three to four years after Chernobyl. First mainly children were diagnosed; now the majority are adult women.

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Just ahead of the holiday season, the hospital's corridors and consulting rooms are full. Surgeon Igor Komisarenko, head of the Institute for Endocrinology, has been operating all morning. Most of his patients are women with thyroid cancer. "Four years after the explosion we were confronted with a surge of cases of children with thyroid cancer. The closer to Chernobyl, the higher the chances of getting thyroid cancer."

Carel de Rooy, the UNICEF representative to the Russian Federation and Belarus, says that the World Health Organization expects many more new cases. UNICEF and other UN offices have been campaigning for years for a policy of universal salt iodization that would make thyroid glands much less vulnerable to radioactive iodine through becoming saturated with the iodized salt. So far, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia have not been willing to adapt their regulations.

Doctor Komisarenko: "After the Chernobyl disaster, iodine was distributed too late, but radiation can affect all parts of the human body. It can of course affect the stomach, the respiratory tract and the gynaecological organs." He has also noticed a rise in serious kidney diseases.

Paediatrician Valentina Smolnikova has seen the consequences in Buda Kashelova in the south of Belarus. She has been working there since 1979 and has seen dramatic changes since the nuclear disaster: "Before that, we hardly had any oncology problems concerning children. Now there are many cases of brain tumours, cancer of the eyes, kidneys and other organs." She noticed the first increase after the disaster in cases of bone and skin cancer: "There were also disorders of the nervous system with stress, depressions and abnormal behaviour." After some years, the pattern changed and Smolnikova then started getting patients with thyroid cancer and leukaemia.

"Now there are many children with congenital heart and kidney diseases." According to Smolnikova, in her area only ten percent of the children are born really healthy: "Many children have chronic diseases or they have very low immunity. Very young children have been here between 30 to 50 times. They are here every single month of their lives." Nastya Eremenko, (9), when she was three years old she was diagnosed with cancer of the uterus. Later on the cancer spread to her lungs. Nastya has had several blocks of chemotherapy.

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