Why We Host

Simply stated “we host because we care”. Most Belarussian families, who live in the villages and small towns, live in what we would consider abject poverty. In addition to radiation exposure children live in an environment with limited employment, poor wages and rampant inflation. Most often it is not always possible to provide the children with adequate amounts of nutritious food. If a place to garden is available it will be planted, primarily in root vegetables. With enough space there may be a few chickens, maybe a pig or a cow. They often supplement what they buy or grow with berries, nuts and mushrooms foraged from the surrounding countryside. Such foraged food is often highly contaminated. Despite all efforts their diets are marginal. Alcoholism, especially among men.

What can we do? Host, contribute and/or volunteer. Our mission is to provide a health respite for these children providing them basic medical and dental care and a chance to replenish their system with a clean environment and healthy food. We could not do it without the help host families, contributions and volunteers. (click here to see - Friends of FTC)

About the Accident

There were three reactors at the nuclear facility near Chernobyl in the Ukraine that provided most of the electricity for the region. On April 26, 1986, during a poorly supervised safety experiment one of the reactors exploded sending clouds of radioactive material to the north and west. In a few days, sixty times the amount of radioactivity released by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima fell on neighboring countries. While some amount of radiation eventually fell on every country in the world, the bulk (70%) fell on neighboring Belarus.

The Soviet bureaucracy delayed announcing the accident for several days. Because of the delay, many actions that might have saved lives, either never took place or were taken too late. After a heroic effort, during which hundreds died, the ruined reactor was encased in a cement shell referred to as the "sarcophagus". This hastily thrown together structure is in constant danger of collapse. Despite the tenuous nature of the sarcophagus, the other two reactors continued to operate until last year.

Because of cover-ups and poor Soviet record keeping, we will never know how many people died as a direct result of the accident (the Ukrainian government estimates at least 10,000 in the Ukraine alone). What we do know is that millions of citizens of Belarus still live with intolerably high levels of radiation. Among those citizens are many thousands of children. The effect of the constant radioactive bombardment on the children manifests itself as thyroid cancer, birth defects, and genetic disorders. A less obvious, and therefore more sinister medical effect on the children has become known as Chernobyl aids. This is the breakdown of the children's immune system as a result of constant exposure to low level radiation combined with very poor nutrition. This is the primary condition we hope to mitigate with health respites, it is not contagious.

The last reactor at the Chernobyl site was shut down in 2001. This was done as a result of international pressure and funding. Unfortunately the damaged reactor is still a threat to the region and the world. Surrounded by a hastily constructed, and now crumbling, enclosure called the sarcophagus, the reactor is still "hot".

A recent study (click here) by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center draws a direct correlation between the fallout and the epidemic prevalence of Thyroid Cancer