Window on Eurasia

1986 Chernobyl Disaster Blamed for Rise in Miscarriages in Russia

 

Paul Goble

Vienna, August 23, 2006 – Doctors in St. Petersburg and other Russian cities privately blame the “massive” rise in the number of miscarriages among 20-year-old Russian women on the April 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, even though government officials continue to deny or otherwise play down any such linkage.

In an article in the current issue of “Noviy Peterburg’,”
investigative journalist Boris Kubrin writes that since last winter
there has been an outbreak of miscarriages among young women born at
the time of or just after the worst nuclear power plant accident of all
time
[http://www.rusk.ru/st.php?idar=110435].

Until very recently, however, most doctors blamed these losses on
“bad ecology” in general or “worsening” patterns of food consumption,
explanations which were supported by Russian medical officials who
Kubrin says have tried to keep any linkage “secret under seven
seals.”

But both the numbers of miscarriages – no statistics are yet
available -- and autopsies performed on the stillborn and often misshaped fetuses make this posture ever less sustainable, the journalist says. And
“the braver doctors are now speaking” about a direct link between radition
released in 1986 and these losses now.

This human tragedy is being compounded, Kubrin writes, by the failure
of the Russian government to ensure that there are sufficient supplied of
drugs like Dufaston that can help such young women with their
pregnancies. Instead, he says, the authorities have allowed certain
drug “barons” to corner the market and push up the price.

As a result, many more women and their potential offspring are
suffering than might otherwise be the case, and some medical professionals,
Kubrin suggests, “are not far from the truth” when they place the blame
for this development on the government itself.

Two additional aspects of this situation make it especially tragic. On
the one hand, it is occurring even as President Vladimir Putin and
other Russian politicians proclaim that Moscow can and will pull out all the
stops to address the country’s worsening demographic situation.

And on the other, Kubrin continues, it means that in six or seven
years, there will be far fewer Russian children enrolling in the first grade.
Instead, he writes, “in 2012-13, the first classes of Russian schools
will be filled up” with immigrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus
who were less affected by the radiation released from Chernobyl.

Kubrin calls on the authorities to stop spending so much time on public
relations about increasing the birthrate and to devote more attention
to the “children of Chernobyl” not only for their own good but also to
ensure that there will not be yet another “echo of Chernobyl” in
Russia’s future.

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