We saw babies with no brains, babies in permanent pain, with distorted and broken bodies. They were obvious to life around them, locked inside their tormented shapes, awaiting death - a death which would end their short but pain filled lives. We saw children without limbs, a little girl who was so badly contorted that her legs grew up towards her body, youngsters with cruel mental handicaps and others with massive growths on their heads . . ." From "Children of Chernobyl" by Adi Roche (Fount: £7.99)
OF all the depressing facets of the problems of Belarus, its institutions for abandoned mentally and physically handicapped children are probably the most disturbing. Grim rooms crammed with cots in which children with their misshapen heads and poor buckled, stunted limbs, lie unnaturally still, without stimulation of any kind, their "nappies" no more than pieces of old linen.
In one such place in Minsk, Adi Roche and Ali Hewson recognised many of the little residents from previous visits. They could discern improvements not immediately evident to a first time visitor evidence that aid was filtering through to where it was needed and that life might be becoming brighter for all who have to live and work there. But in many of these places the stench is so overpowering, the absence of childish things so incongruous, the desperation for love so evident, the tight clasp of a tiny hand so distressing, that the images stay etched in the mind for long afterwards.
Like every other problem in Belarus, this one shows no sign of abating. In one such place outside Gomel, government funding has been completely withdrawn. According to its education supervisor - who said that it was two years before she could summon up the courage to visit the room housing the most severely handicapped children its survival is entirely due to Western aid. Some 60 per cent of the babies have some abnormality. She claimed an adoption rate of about 40 per cent but admitted that she has never seen a couple adopt a handicapped child.
The number of babies born with congenital malformations has grown steadily since 1986, the figures doubling in the severely contaminated areas of Gomel and Mogilev. Caesium and strontium (see left) are perceived to be the culprits. While the figures appeared to stabilise in 1991, this has been more than compensated for by the number of abortions being carried out due to suspected foetal abnormalities. Taking these into account, the frequency of congenital abnormalities per thousand babies has risen from 12.5 pre Chernobyl to 22.4 in 1994.
Severe mutations have also been observed in animal and plant life on contaminated land. This is such an "interesting" phenomenon that vast collective farms - too contaminated for any other purpose - have been given to chemical companies for research.
Meanwhile, conditions in regular Belarussian hospitals are also disturbing. In Gomel Regional, government funding meets only 50 per cent of requirements. Patients - if they can afford it - bring along their own linen, medicine, bandages and food. Hospital doctors are constantly pleading for Western drugs and equipment. (One Canadian doctor has remarked that medical equipment in Minsk is similar to that of Western hospitals in the 1930s and 1940s).
As locally produced drugs are either sub standard or unavailable, patients can only go without, pray for Western donations or pay Western prices. One mother begged me to pass a drug container to Adi Roche in the hope that she could get supplies to her. It costs around $10 a week - a quarter of her daughter's monthly "invalid" pension, a sum on which her entire family survives.
The West, they say, is their only hope.