They also need better care at the orphanages to which they are most often given by their parents. Other children suffer from thyroid cancer and respiratory problems, which are directly linked by scientists to the Chernobyl catastrophe. Not only Ukraine suffered from the nuclear accident. Southern Belarus was affected heavily as well, some areas as much as Chernobyl itself, because the radioactive cloud moved to the north, saving Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, from disaster. Probably everyone who lives in the area suffers some form of cancer or other disease attributed to radiation.
People still check the radiation levels in fresh food they buy at the markets.
The radioactive cloud also covered parts of southern Russia, and the population there has the same problems as people in Ukraine and Belarus. Although the shutdown of the last reactor was a major media event, it is not the last story about Chernobyl, which will most likely remain in the news for several more centuries. Dasha Merkusheva is a World Internet Times columnist.