POVERTY, MENTAL HEALTH GREATEST STUMBLING BLOCKS FOR CHERNOBYL SURVIVORS, UN
New York, Sep  6 2005 12:00PM

Among the hundreds of thousands who were exposed to radiation during
the Chernobyl disaster 20 years ago, only about 4,000 people will die
from acute radiation and cancer, but many more suffer from the
lingering effects of poverty, and lack of information on how to live
in the contaminated areas and on how to regain their livelihoods,
according to a new United Nations report.

Resources should be refocused on highly contaminated areas and
government programmes should be redesigned to "help those genuinely in
need," said the report, "Chernobyl: The True Scale of the Accident,"
conducted by the Chernobyl Forum which includes eight specialized UN
agencies and the governments of Belarus, Russia and the Ukraine.

Although the disaster had terrible consequences for people living in
the region, "We have not found profound negative health impacts to the
rest of the population in surrounding areas, nor have we found
widespread contamination that would continue to pose a substantial
threat to human health," Burton Bennett, chairman of the Chernobyl
Forum said.

Instead, poverty, lifestyle diseases related to alcohol, smoking,
stress and poor diets now rampant in the former Soviet Union, and
mental health problems pose a far greater threat to local communities
than do radiation exposure, the report said.  The mental health impact
was far larger than the physical health problems, attributable to the
damaging impact of lack of information, negative self-assessments,
belief in short life expectancy, and "lack of initiative, and
dependency on assistance from the state," it added.

Relocation of 116,000 people at the time of the accident also proved
to be "highly traumatic," it said.

Consisting of 100 scientists, the panel recommended that the Chernobyl
assistance programmes that had been set up after the disaster to help
mend the lives of residents should be more targeted, eliminate
benefits to people in outlying areas, improve primary health care,
support safe food production, and encourage small and medium sized
business enterprises.

Among those people considered most in need are an estimated 4,000 out
of 600,000 emergency workers, evacuees and residents who may die from
acute radiation syndrome (ARS) or radiation-induced cancer and
leukemia. Since the 1986 disaster, 50 emergency workers died of ARS,
and 4,000 children have contracted thyroid cancer. Despite its
sometimes physically debilitating effects, thyroid cancer is treatable
and only nine children have died from the disease.

Stressing the need to scale back large subsidy programmes for
residents, better information needs to be provided by the governments
of Belarus, Russia, and the Ukraine, "not only about how to live
safely in regions of low-level contamination, but also about leading
healthy lifestyles and creating new livelihoods," said Louisa Vinton,
Chernobyl focal point at the UN Development Programme, (UNDP).

Attention should also be paid to the environmental problems brewing on
the horizon, such as how to get rid of the tons of highly radioactive
contaminants at and around the Chernobyl site, and the slow
disintegration of the sarcophagus built to contain the damaged reactor
which has degraded, and poses a risk of collapse and the release of
radioactive dust, the report added.

The Chernobyl Forum is composed of the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA), the UNDP, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO),
the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the UN Scientific
Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), and the World
Bank.

2005-09-06 00:00:00.000 
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