BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

July 09, 2005

Children of Chernobyl get medical help in W.Va.

# Belarusian kids, battling cancer, flee radiation for the summer

By Tara Tuckwiller
Staff writer

Katya Zabrudskaya was 7 years old the first time she left her parents in Belarus to live with strangers in West Virginia for six weeks. It was a slim shot at undoing some of the destruction that Chernobyl had wreaked on her body.

Charleston doctors are involved in an international program to help children who live in the radioactive shadow of the old Chernobyl nuclear reactor. The children weren't even born when Chernobyl exploded in 1986, but they bear the brunt of its legacy.

Zabrudskaya, now 16, has hit the age limit for the program. This is her last summer break from the radiation that threatens to give her thyroid cancer. And Friday was her last visit with the doctors who help her for free.

"My thyroid is enlarged because of Chernobyl," she said matter-of-factly. Around her in the doctors' waiting room, the other dozen or so Belarusian children joked and chattered - in their own language with each other, and in fluent English with their host moms and dads.

"They're trying to keep giving me some medicine to take back home with me," Zabrudskaya continued. "It looks like it's getting a little bit better. This year, I don't have to have a biopsy."

The doctors at home try to help, she said, but they can't really pay attention to everyone who has thyroid problems. "It's normal there," she said. Indeed, thyroid cancer rates among children rose up to 10 times higher in the fallout areas in the 10 years after Chernobyl, according to the Baylor University clearinghouse that compiles data from the West Virginia doctors and others.

"It's frightening," said Dr. Steven Artz, an endocrinologist with West Virginia University Physicians of Charleston. "We biopsied two of these kids last year." That's two in about a dozen. By comparison, Dr. Fred Zangeneh - a pediatric endocrinologist colleague of Artz's who also examined the children - recalls only two West Virginia children with thyroid cancer in his entire 16 years here.

Chernobyl fallout is still showing up in radioactive reindeer in Norway, and radioactive sheep as far away as Scotland and Wales. But 70 percent of the radioactive fallout settled upon a corner of Belarus about the same size and population as West Virginia. That is Zabrudskaya's, and the other children's, homeland.

At first, the Soviet government hushed up the meltdown. The world found out two days later, when Swedish scientists detected high levels of radiation wafting over from somewhere in the Soviet Union.

Belarus remained under Soviet rule for several years. People weren't evacuated. They continued to breathe radiation, absorb it through their skin, and eat it in their foods.

As soon as Belarus gained its independence, families in the Charleston area - and elsewhere in the United States, and Israel, Australia and Europe - opened their homes to help children escape the radiation, if only for a brief time each summer. That was 15 years ago.

"Their parents clamor to get them out of there," said host parent Susie Marshall. This year, Marshall is hosting an orphan, the youngest boy in the group. He sat on her lap in the waiting room after his exam, laughing and talking with the other children. He will celebrate his 10th birthday next week. "He brought me two books, a mirror and a bar of chocolate" as a thank-you gift, she said. "It's all he had."

Children often return to the same host family year after year, forging a close bond. "We call them when they're away, at least once a month and every holiday," said host Rachel Harper. When the children are here, "We go places like Seneca Rocks, to the movies, swimming, out to eat. Our kids always seem to love Taco Bell ... Even little things like fresh fruit. They can't get it where they're from. They can't get enough of it."

The children's homeland is wracked by disease, population decline and a depressed economy. Birth defects are up 83 percent since Chernobyl, according to a Baylor report. But medical spending per capita is less than one-tenth of that in the United States, according to the World Health Organization.

One-fifth of Belarus's farms and almost one-third of its forestland is contaminated - the region's two significant industries. Last year, in an apparent attempt to jump-start the economy, Belarus's government announced plans to increase agricultural production on the contaminated land.

Contaminated food is a major cause of the children's thyroid cancer, U.S. doctors have found.

With little money, people find it difficult to move away from Chernobyl. "There's not a lot of places where you can move away, actually," Zabrudskaya explained. "Belarus, Ukraine and Russia" are all contaminated. "To move to Latvia or other places in Europe ... it's expensive."

Area churches are always looking for more host families, said Rachel Harper of Heritage Baptist Church in Pinch. For information, contact Paul and Theresa Harper at 965-7539.

To contact staff writer Tara Tuckwiller, use e-mail or call 348-5189.

Source:

http://wvgazette.com/section/News/2005070816