A Forgotten Generation
Twenty-nine years later, one million Chernobyl children still live in nuclear fallout zones
April 26, 2015 will mark the 29th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. In 1986, a nuclear power plant bordering Ukraine and Belarus sustained two explosions which released 200 times more radiation than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 2005, a report by The Chernobyl Forum indicated that approximately 5 million people, including over 1 million children, continue to live in fallout zones. Nearly one in five of these children suffer from disabilities, and chronic illness. Birth defects and deformities are also common among children born and raised in the fallout zones. Despite nearly three decades of sporadic humanitarian aid and respite programs, there is little evidence that Chernobyl’s children have been relocated or that their health statuses have been improved. At times, it seems as if the world has moved on and the children of Chernobyl have been forgotten.
However, not all have forgotten. For the past eight years, Slavvy Petrov has committed much of his high school and undergraduate years to working with Chernobyl orphans with compromised immune systems. As part of a transnational respite initiative, philanthropic organizations sponsor groups of Chernobyl children to come to the U.S. during the summer, to reduce their exposure to toxic radiation levels and to undergo physical exams and minor treatment. After a three-month stay in the U.S., these children are sent back to the same fallout zones.
During the summer of 2005, Slavvy had the opportunity to meet these children and to witness their tears of anguish when they begged not to return to the prison-like orphanages of the former Soviet Union. As he says, “Direct exposure to human suffering galvanized my desire to take action… I knew I did not have the means to relocate these children, but I wanted to help them and to give them some hope that went beyond a medical check-up or three months of living in the U.S.”
In 2006, Slavvy took steps necessary to get approval from Duke Raleigh Hospital to develop a program called “Preserving a Nation” (PAN). The PAN program’s different interventions aim to demonstrate that hand and oral hygiene, substance abuse prevention, proper nutrition and exercise, and emotional and spiritual health are imperative to building and sustaining a strong immune system. As Slavvy points out, “the goal of this health education program is to teach a generation of orphans the habits and skills of healthy living.” Aside from the skill-building approach, each child is provided a health kit with a six-month supply of items such as soap, tooth paste, toothbrushes, nail clippers, lip balm, combs, and socks.
The few children who return each year provide inspiring testimonies about how consistent implementation of the hand washing and tooth-brushing techniques they had learned in the PAN program helped them stay free of colds and infections through the year. Older kids tell stories about times they mustered the courage to resist peer pressure to engage in drug-use or underage binge drinking, and how they are telling younger peers to do the same. As one 18-year-old PAN participant, living with a congenital heart defect, said, “The PAN program gave me the ability to know that I can, to some extent, take control of my health…that I no longer have to be fatalistic, I can make the right choices and this can support my health now and in the future.”
To date, two hundred and twenty Chernobyl orphans have participated in the PAN program. The program is dependent on the generosity of supporters. In order to make a difference in these children’s lives, the world must continue to remember them. As one staff member of the PAN program said, “When you remember the suffering through which these children live every day, you will remember them…and when you remember you will be moved to act.” Effect change, support the PAN initiative.