Children Of Chernobyl

MINSK, BELARUS - AUGUST 16: 2-year-old Nastya Dolgovevets from Slutsk village in the Minsk region of Belarus sits on her bed on August 16, 1996, at the Children?s Division of the Oncology Research Institute in Minsk, Belarus. She has been diagnosed with a left wrist tumor. The marks on her head were from iodine that the doctors used to cover up little spots that were beginning to appear on her body that they were unsure what they were from. On April 26, 1986, reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station on the border of the Ukraine and Belarus exploded. The fire, which burned out of control for five days, spewed more than 50 tons of radioactive fallout across Belarus. The wind carried the heaviest radioactive deposits across Belarus, where even today a large portion of the land is considered uninhabitable. The government denied the accident happened for several days, allowing the people in the Gomel region of Belarus to linger in the radiation. The cause of the medical illnesses are often hard to find, and much harder to prove. But, the rise in the number of cancer cases in this region is too great for any other conclusion ? it has to be the radiation. Many of the children are curable, but the hospitals lack the medicine and the supplies needed to help the children. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)