Children Of Chernobyl

NAROVLYA, BELARUS - AUGUST 18: A picture of a doll left behind in the evacuated village of Grydni on August 18, 1996, in Minsk, Belarus. As the winds shifted from region to region, many villages became contaminated with the radiation from the Chernobyl diaster. Grydni is approximately 20 miles away from Chernobyl, and was one fo the first to hear about the disaster. On April 26, 1986, reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station on the border of the Ukraine and Belarus exploded. The fire, which burned out of control for five days, spewed more than 50 tons of radioactive fallout across Belarus. The wind carried the heaviest radioactive deposits across Belarus, where even today a large portion of the land is considered uninhabitable. The government denied the accident happened for several days, allowing the people in the Gomel region of Belarus to linger in the radiation. The cause of the medical illnesses are often hard to find, and much harder to prove. But, the rise in the number of cancer cases in this region is too great for any other conclusion ? it has to be the radiation. Many of the children are curable, but the hospitals lack the medicine and the supplies needed to help the children. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)