Chernobyl - 30 Years

30 years after the worst civil nuclear disaster, children in Chernobyl are still born with severe birth defects and rare types of cancer.

18:26 26 April 2016

The worst civil nuclear disaster that took place on 26 April 1986 is still affecting people in Chernobyl as women, who have spent their entire lives exposed to high levels of radiation, are now having children.

 

Children in this region are still being born with severe birth defects and rare types of cancer. British paediatrician Dr Rachel Furley says that in most severe cases, babies have missing limbs and in one case, a baby was born with two heads.

 

Dr Furley established a charity that provides pain relief, palliative care and potentially lifesaving blood tests for the unusually high number of children with cancer in the region. Roughly 400 of the children that her charity assists have developed thyroid cancer.

 

She said: "We have an awful lot of palliative cancers and tumours. Types which we don't see anywhere else in the world."

 

Chernobyl remains the world’s civil nuclear disasters caused by design flaws that lead to a power surge, causing massive explosions that blew the top off reactor four. The contamination spread across neighbouring Belarus and into Europe.