Hartford TV station focuses on CCRF's work in Ukraine (01/18/98)

Hartford TV station focuses on CCRF's work in Ukraine

HARTFORD, Conn. - The award-winning Connecticut news station, Fox-61, based in Hartford, Conn., recently broadcast a four-part series on the continuing aftermath of the explosion at the Chornobyl power station. Veteran news reporter Shelly Sindland and cameraman Paul Quimby spent a week in Ukraine visiting children's hospitals, orphanages and abandoned villages in northern Kyiv Oblast to document the impact of the 1986 disaster on the lives of families and children in the affected region.

The series featured the humanitarian relief efforts of the Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund (CCRF), whose chapters in Hartford and New Haven, along with active support groups in other communities across Connecticut, have played a key role in the CCRF's relief mission.

Fox-61 is the winner of eight Associated Press awards for television journalism, including the coveted Mark Twain Award for overall excellence in news reporting. The Chornobyl series was broadcast in late November and again on Christmas Day in a half-hour format during the station's regular 10 p.m. news program.

In its first episode, the Fox team focused on the plight of Halya Koroliuk, an 8-year-old victim of thyroid cancer who received assistance from CCRF supporters in Wethersfield, Conn. Miss. Koroliuk is recovering from surgery she received at the Kyiv Institute of Endocrinology and Metabolism. She must undergo follow-up surgery to restore the use of her vocal cords and to remove the cancer that has now metastasized into her lungs.

The news team traveled to Halya's home village of Yablunka in the Polissia region approximately 12 miles on the outskirts of the Chornobyl "dead zone." Due to severe economic circumstances, her family, as well others in the village, continue to farm and cultivate vegetables despite the fact that many surrounding villages have been evacuated due to severe radioactive contamination.

In 1995, a conference of international authorities meeting in Geneva concluded that the sharp increase of thyroid cancer among children in Ukraine and Belarus is clearly linked to their exposure to radioactive iodine during the height of the Chornobyl disaster. However, another segment of the program focused on other forms of cancer that have not yet been analyzed for possible links to Chornobyl's radiation.

The Fox team interviewed Dr. Andrei Gryazov, a technician who supervises the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) unit installed by the CCRF and the Ukrainian National Women's League of America (UNWLA). The MRI unit has already tested over 6,000 patients since 1994, and has located more than 600 malignant tumors.

Dr. Gryazov expressed his concern that numerous tumors were discovered in very small children, and that several were unusual mutations that the staff had not been able to identify even after searching international oncology literature.

Perhaps the most moving segment was the final episode, in which the Fox team documented conditions at the Vorzel resort area in north-central Ukraine, near the village of Bucha. Two hundred and fifty orphans and abandoned children, most of whom suffer from birth defects and mental retardation, are housed there.

Ms. Sindland cited a Japanese study completed in 1994 which found that since Chornobyl, birth defects had doubled among children and stillborn fetuses in Belarus and some of the same types of birth defects have been reported in northern Ukraine, including missing or dwarfed limbs, unusually severe cleft palates and extra digits. (One child shown in the broadcast had eight toes on one foot. Another child was born without an eye and nose, and with an inverted foot).

Some of these same conditions were documented by award-winning photographer Jim Lerager and Washington Post reporter James Rupert. Yet few if any of the Chornobyl health studies funded by the U.S. or Ukrainian governments have focused on the genetic impact of the nuclear disaster.

In an exchange of comments between Ms. Sindland and news anchors Pat Sheehan and Susan Christensen, the broadcast raised the issue as to why Western researchers have failed to analyze many of the long-term health effects that seem to have increased since Chornobyl, and Ms. Sindland mentioned in her report that Ukrainian doctors seek further research assistance from the West.

In another segment, Ms. Christensen asked for a clarification of the new spelling of Chornobyl used by the CCRF. Ms. Sindland explained: "Ukraine is going through a period of transition in which the people want to reclaim their culture. 'Chernobyl' was the old, Russian spelling. The proper Ukrainian spelling is now recommended by the U.S. Library of Congress."

Besides Kyiv province, the Fox team also toured the Lviv Regional Specialized Children's Hospital, which has received over $5 million worth of aid from the CCRF for the treatment of children with leukemia, cancer and non-Hodgkins lymphoma, as well as assistance from the UNWLA, the SUM-A Medical Aid Project and other Western medical aid providers. The team also toured the Volyn Regional Children's Hospital in Lutsk, one of the latest hospitals to receive substantial aid from the CCRF.

Ms. Sindland interviewed several representatives of the CCRF for the Fox broadcast, including Executive Director Nadia Matkiwsky, Ukraine's In-Country Director Nathan Hodge, Director of Development Alex Kuzma and Assistant to the Executive Director Ksenia Kyzyk, as well as Ukrainian medical experts. The CCRF team was in Lviv monitoring the distribution of aid from its 19th airlift, which was coordinated with and greeted by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton during her visit to Ukraine.

Nuclear safety issues have attracted growing interest in Connecticut as the state's nuclear plants owned by Northeast Utilities have been cited for serious safety violations. The Fox-61 broadcast took pains to distinguish between the design of American nuclear plants, which include numerous safety features never installed in the graphite-based RBMK technology utilized in Soviet reactors. Nevertheless, the news report reflected on Chornobyl as the worst-case scenario that could result from gross negligence and defiance of safety procedures at nuclear facilities.

The Fox broadcast received favorable commentary in the Hartford Courant, the New Haven Register, the Connecticut Journal Courier and other print media. It also stimulated schoolchildren and teachers in at least two Connecticut communities to initiate holiday gift drives for the CCRF.

Ukrainian communities that wish to have the four-part series broadcast in their area should contact the program director or general manager of their local Fox-TV affiliate and request that the affiliate contact Fox-61 to obtain the series. April 26 is the 12th anniversary of the explosion.

For further information contact Fox-61 News, 1-800-788-0852; or the Connecticut office of the Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund, (203) 407-0261.

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