On April 26th 1986 the world experienced the worst nuclear accident ever recorded.

One of the cooling plants (no 4) of the Ukraine’s Lenin Nuclear power facility at Chernobyl experienced a melt-down, which released thousands of tons of nuclear radiation (300 times more lethal than the combined releases from atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 into the Eastern European atmosphere.

The catastrophe immediately devastated cities, villages, farms, crops and food supplies in and around Chernobyl and the northern Ukraine and the bordering countries of Belarus and Western Russia.
The southern winds blew a life-threatening nuclear cloud north over northern Ukraine and the Republic of Belarus, showering down radioactive nuclides iodine, caesium, plutonium, strontium, on the countryside poisoning the citizens of all three countries.

Over 70% of these invisible toxins rained down on northern Ukraine and Belarus, creating what is called the “The Chernobyl Zone” a highly contaminated area that some scientists believe will take about 25000 years to recover.

The issue of exactly how many people died or have suffered serious illness as a direct or indirect result of the Chernobyl disaster is controversial, and has become caught up in the debates between those for and against nuclear power.

The Chernobyl Forum report prepared by UN agencies and the governments of Belarus, Ukraine and the Russian Federation “Chernobyl’s Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts” ( The Chernobyl Forum: 2003-2005 Second Revised Edition) confirms that “Childhood thyroid cancer caused by radioactive iodine fallout is one of the main health impacts of the accident. Doses to the thyroid received in the first few months after the accident were particularly high in those who were children at the time and drank milk with high levels of radioactive iodine. By 2002, more than 4,000 thyroid cancer cases have been diagnosed in this group, and it is most likely that a large fraction of these thyroid cancers is attributable to radioiodine intake.”

The same report, while stating that it is impossible to assess reliably and with precision the numbers of fatal cancers caused by radiation exposure due to the Chernobyl accident refers to the conclusions of an international expert group that among the 600,000 persons receiving more significant exposures, the possible increase in cancer mortality “might be up to a few per cent. This might eventually represent up to four thousand fatal cancers in addition to the approximately 100,000 fatal cancers to be expected due to all other causes in this population.”

At Camps for Children of Chernobyl we do not profess to be experts in epidemiology or public health statistics. We want to make life better for some of the children suffering serious illnesses such as thyroid cancer resulting from this disaster. There have been 150 of these children at our camps to date, selected on the basis of medical need by leading physicians from their own country. Every one of them is an individual, and those are the statistics that matter most to us.

The remaining environmental and ecological consequences of the Chernobyl accident and subsequent radiation spills into the environments of Eastern Europe have not been fully realized or totally assessed by the World’s health and scientific communities.

Camps For Children Of Chernobyl is a non-profit humanitarian aid organization supporting the children and families of Ukraine, Belarus and western Russia.

• To bring to the United Kingdom children whose health has been severely affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster for recuperative holidays.
• To assist with where possible children who need special medical treatment, provided by us via private sector sponsors, if it is not available to them in their countries.
• To send medical and other humanitarian aid to various hospitals orphanages and any such establishment within the affected regions of Belarus, Ukraine and western Russia.
• To inculcate public awareness of the implications and plight of those affected by the world worst nuclear catastrophe.

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