Ghosts of Chernobyl - I

The Ghosts of Chernobyl is a photo show I have put together from what I came across on the web, mostly from Greenpeace.


Nine-year-old Alexandra with her father Vitaly in Gomel, Belarus. Alexandra has a birth defect, called hydrocephalus. Vitaly has quit his job to care for his daughter. The family lives in the fall out zone of the Chernobyl disaster.


Sisters Irina and Elena live in an area of Belarus contaminated by the Chernobyl disaster. Both have had brain tumours removed and now have problems with their thyroid gland.


Galina has thyroid cancer. For surgeon Igor Komisarenko, most of his patients are thyroid cancer victims: "The closer to Chernobyl, the higher the chances of getting thyroid cancer."


Nastya, from Belarus was only three years old when she was diagnosed with cancer of the uterus and lungs. According to local doctors the region has seen a huge increase in childhood cancer cases since the Chernobyl disaster.


Natalia had a brain tumour at 8 and her little brother Kostya has Down’s syndrome. They live near Mayak, the site of a former nuclear plant in Russia and the most radioactively polluted place on Earth. Radioactive waste was poured straight in to the river. Their mother swam in the river and blames it for her children’s illnesses. "We didn’t know there was anything wrong until many people became ill. We called it river disease."


Ramzis has hydrocephalus. “I don’t like to go to school, because the boys call me bad names. The girls avoid me and don’t want to go out with me. I hope I will not have children who look like me.” Ramzis lives near Mayak, the site of a former Russian nuclear plant and the most radioactively polluted place on Earth.


Ardak lives in the highly contaminated Semipalatinsk nuclear test zone in Kazakhstan. He is 33 and suffering from a rare bone disease that makes his body shrink. His doctors don’t know what is wrong and think he may die. He has shrunk more than 30 centimetres.

In the cancer ward of a Kiev hospital in the Ukraine, 19-year-old Elena is being treated for her second case of thyroid cancer in just 3 years.