More than 25,000 Chernobyl victims treated in Cuba

[Mika]

More than 25,000 Chernobyl victims treated in Cuba
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=22258

HAVANA TIMES, March 30 – More than 25,000 persons affected by the Chernobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine have been treated in Cuba in the last 20 years, reported Julio Medina, director of the Cuban health program for the victims of the disaster. The explosion of a reactor in the Chernobyl nuclear plant occurred on April 26, 1986 and affected around nine million persons in the former Soviet Union (USSR), reported IPS.

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[Peace Patriot]

1. Thanks for this info--more facts we NEVER hear from the corpo-fascist press! nt

[Judi Lynn]

2. Here are 11 photos in a new Reuters sideshow: Chernobyl victims treated in Cuba

http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/slideshow?articleId=USRTR2BZRV#a=1

[Judi Lynn]

3. Cuba Marks 15 Years Treating Chernobyl Victims

Cuba Marks 15 Years
Treating Chernobyl Victims

By Conner Gorry

Victims of the Chernobyl explosion first
arrived for treatment in Cuba in 1990.

When disaster strikes, the world is riveted. Who can forget Mt. St Helen’s spewing ash over Washington State or the thousands of corpses stacked like logs after the chemical plant catastrophe in Bhopal, India?

Unfortunately, once the immediate crisis is contained and the headlines shift to the next big story, world attention fades. This is precisely what happened after the nuclear accident in Chernobyl, now largely forgotten in many places. But not in Cuba, where over 18,000 children and young adults have been treated for a panoply of illnesses over the past 15 years.

Ukrainian Health Minister Nykola Efremovish Polischuk was in Cuba recently to commemorate the anniversary. In remarks delivered at a ceremony in Havana’s Teatro Nacional, he pointed out that the island nation is one of the few countries to have extended aid to Chernobyl’s victims. The ongoing and sustainable medical nature of this aid is what distinguishes the Cuban program and has led to broadened bilateral relations over the past 15 years.

The Explosion

On April 26, 1986, the central reactor at the nuclear plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine exploded and caught fire, killing dozens and inciting panic as plumes of radioactive smoke spread outward; the toxic fallout eventually killed thousands. Children were among the first to be evacuated in a massive exodus that saw 150,000 people abandoning their homes and workplaces; everything for a 30-km radius from the reactor was left behind in the evacuation, creating an instant ghost town.

Aid was swiftly dispatched in the disaster’s aftermath and many orphaned children found safety with adoptive parents in Spain, Italy, France and Germany; recreational programs and group vacations for affected children were also offered by various countries including Italy, Israel and Spain. But after a few years, the disastrous event in Chernobyl was eclipsed by other catastrophes, even though thousands were still - or becoming - sick.

Cuba Offers Medical Treatment

Mounting evidence about the nature and scope of the radioactive fallout led the Cuban government to establish its “Chernobyl Children” program at the Tarará Pediatric Hospital in 1990. The idea was to provide free, comprehensive medical care to the most severely affected children aged 5-15 years from the region. From the first group of 139 severely ill children who arrived in Cuba on March 29, 1990 to the nearly 800 patients - both children and adults - treated in 2004, that idea has blossomed into a concrete reality helping people of many nations get well in the wake of disasters.

The majority of the first young patients arriving from Chernobyl suffered from gastrointestinal, immunological and hematological illnesses. Endocrine problems, particularly thyroid cancer and hyperplasia, were the most common. In the earliest stages of the Tarará project, Cuban doctors and specialists treated 289 patients with leukemia and performed six bone marrow and two kidney transplants. Ukrainian officials estimate the Cuban government has spent some US$300 million to treat these thousands of children – far and away more than any other country has offered the victims of Chernobyl.

In an exclusive interview with MEDICC Review, Dr. Julio Medina, Director of the Tarará Pediatric Hospital said “the first cases we saw had thyroid-related illnesses – these were the first effects of the accident. Today, we consider posttraumatic stress disorder the second effect of the accident.” Genetic malformations - especially in the kidneys - resulting from radioactive exposure, and skin disorders like vitiligo, are other long-term effects being treated at Tarará.

Like all patients in the Cuban public health system, the Chernobyl kids are treated using an integrative approach that includes a wide array of specialists - from pediatricians and oncologists, to psychologists and dentists. They also benefit from the latest advances in Cuban biotechnology, receiving hepatitis B and other vaccinations and recombinant interferon therapy.

Dr. Medina added that though officials “peg the number of victims at 100,000, it is very difficult to say…because the area is still contaminated.” Since much of that contamination is with Cesium 137, (with a half life of between 20 and 50 years), coupled with the fact that some evacuees are repopulating Chernobyl after 19 years away from home, it’s likely the doctors at Tarará will continue to treat a fair number of comely children, their flaxen hair gone due to alopecia.

More:
http://www.medicc.org/publications/medicc_review/0505/top-story.html

[Judi Lynn]

4. Chernobyl children in Cuba - radiation victims are treated

Chernobyl children in Cuba - radiation victims are treated
Progressive, The, Nov, 1994 by Alex Tehrani

Tarara, Cuba

This beach-front town twenty kilometers east of downtown Havana was once a resort area for the wealthy. After the Cuban revolution, it became a recreational summer camp for Cuban children. In the past four years, the ethnic makeup of Tarara has become heavily Ukrainian, as Soviet children arrive by the thousands to receive treatment for illnesses related to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

The idea of this solidarity project is to provide the young victims of Chernobyl not only with medical assistance but also with a playful, stress-free atmosphere that encourages rehabilitation. The result is a peculiar scene: blond-haired, blue-eyed youngsters with various radiation-related illnesses running and laughing in the surf of the Caribbean island. They arrive on Air Ukraine wearing long jackets, ski hats, and boots, and anxiously begin adapting to their new surroundings, trading warm clothes for bathing suits and taking on a tanned, relaxed appearance.

In 1990, in response to an international plea for assistance for the victims of Chernobyl, two countries immediately stepped forward. Israel committed to taking in fifty Jewish victims, and Cuba offered to host an initial 10,000 children, and as many as 50,000 by the year 2000. The only cost the Cuban government would not cover was the air fare. News of the gesture confused analysts. Cuba was already suffering shortages of food, electricity, oil, and paper. Many wondered how the government could justify offering aid on such a grand scale to another country--particularly the Soviet Union, which was in the process of cutting back financial and material aid to Cuba from 85 per cent of everything the island nation received from the outside to next to nothing. The project is partly a show of solidarity toward Cuba's former benefactors, and partly a shrewd political calculation inlcuding the expectation that the gesture might be returned.

The Soviets have not been bashful about creating homes for themselves at Tarara, decorating their airy, high-ceilinged beach houses with posters from their towns and appropriating the food Cuba provides to cook tasty yogurt desserts and blintzes.

Tarara itself is an impressive town. It is eleven square kilometers, complete with two kilometers of beach and 521 homes, a cultural center with a movie theater, two enormous playing fields, an amusement park, and a small zoo. There is a central hospital with 350 beds, and several smaller treatment centers and testing labs. A dedicated Cuban staff of 400, including fifty doctors and eighty nurses, squeeze onto packed buses from all over Havana in order to get to Tarara each day.

While many of the long-term patients have learned Spanish and salsa dancing, the Ukrainian program director has established a schedule to imitate daily life back home. A bilingual Russian and Ukrainian school is staffed by volunteer teachers, mostly parents of the visiting children, so that there is no interruption in the children's studies.

Six-year-old Alexei Junostenko and his father, Anatoli, came to Cuba in a last-ditch effort to save Alexei's life. When Alexei was two years old, he was diagnosed with leukemia and given three months to live by a Ukrainian doctor. Anatoli did not have the $40,000 to $50,000 needed for treatment, so he took a friend's advice and made a desperate visit to a Cuban medical commission in Kiev. The two were selected to fly immediately to Havana.

"Now, after four years here, the boy is alive, running, smiling," Anatoli told me over a cup of tea at his Tarara home. "To be away from the snow, to have food provided, and to be surrounded by people who are committed to making our children feel better about the consequences of this disaster cannot be downplayed.... There is hope for the future."

More:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1295/is_n11_v58/ai_15890043/

http://www.cubaheadlines.com.nyud.net:8090/files/cubaheadlines.com/imagenes/ni%C3%B1os%20de%20chern0bil.jpg

http://i.telegraph.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01377/chernobyl-girls_1377320i.jpg

Ukrainian girls Annia, 11, and Dina, 16, victims of radiation fallout
from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, sit in an office at the Ped
iatric Hospital in Tarara, outside Havana. For the past 19 years, Cuba
has been providing free health treatment to around 24,000 child victims
of the Chernobyl explosion in Ukraine

Picture: REUTERS

http://www.havanatimes.org.nyud.net:8090/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/estefania-y-nastia.jpg

http://cache.daylife.com.nyud.net:8090/imageserve/095f0Dggr60IJ/340x.jpg

Reuters Pictures 12 months ago
A Ukranian girl who is a victim of the radiation fallout
from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, walks with her
mother at the Pediatric Hospital in Tarara, outside of
Havana, April 1, 2009. For the past 19 years, Cuba has
been providing free health treatment to around 24,000
child victims of the Chernobyl explosion in Ukraine.

~~~~~
Revolutionary care: Castro's doctors give hope to the children of Chernobyl
Young victims continue to receive treatment in Cuba two decades after Ukrainian nuclear disaster
Andres Schipani in Tarara
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 2 July 2009 18.51 BST

http://static.guim.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/7/2/1246556991176/Ukrainian-victims-of-the--001.jpg

Ukrainian victims of the fallout from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in
Cuba for treatment. More than 18,000 have been treated since 1990.
Photograph: Claudia Daut/Reuters

Eleven-year-old Olga enters the beach house in flip-flops, her hair still wet from a dip in the Caribbean. "I really like it here," she says. "The food is great, the beach is awesome. I made some fantastic friends."

A typical child's reaction to a beach holiday, perhaps – only this is no ordinary seaside break. Olga is a Ukrainian "Chernobyl child", in Cuba not for a holiday but to undergo intensive medical treatment with some of the country's best doctors. She goes to school along with 180 other Ukrainian children. "I miss some bits of my home town," she muses. "But I don't ever want to leave."

Olga is one of more than 18,000 Ukrainian children to have been treated over the years at the Tarara facility near the Cuban capital, Havana. The programme was set up in 1990 to treat the victims of the world's most devastating nuclear accident four years earlier.

A steady procession of children with bald heads, skin lesions and other malformations have since benefited from splashing in the clear blue Caribbean waters. Twenty-three years after Chernobyl, the Cuban programme is still going strong. Remarkably, children born years after the disaster still suffer physical consequences of the meltdown that irradiated large parts of Ukraine and Belarus; equally remarkably, despite isolation and economic miasma, Cuba still manages to tend to them.

Olga's freckled face is marbled with pink and brown patches due to depigmentation. Her arms and legs are also affected. She suffers from vitiligo, a skin disease that some believe is caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Both those causes can be attributed to her case: she was born in a small village in the northern Rivne province in Ukraine, near Chernobyl.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/02/cuba-chernobyl-health-children

~~~~~
Recommending, #3.

[Wilms]

5. Wow!

[protocol rv]

6. Good, now they can prepare to treat Venezuelans

From the Russian nuclear power plants we're about to buy.

[AlphaCentauri]

7. or the GE power plants? n/t