Tuesday, November 28, 1995

   UNITED NATIONS (Reuter) - Funds to help victims of the Chernobyl
nuclear accident have nearly dried up even as the area is turning into
an international scientific laboratory for atomic disasters, a U.N.
senior official said Tuesday.
   "Some feel as if they are laboratory rats the rest of the world is
coming to study, not to help," said Peter Hansen, undersecretary-
general for humanitarian affairs.  "But even that is welcome by the
authorities because it helps maintain some focus and interest in the
issue."
   Hansen addressed a news conference a day before an annual meeting
between ministers from the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia on raising
funds and planning programs for 10th anniversary of the fire and
explosion in the power plant April 26, 1986.
   The ministers are to speak to the General Assembly and meet with
delegates of U.N. agencies, the European Union and the European Bank
for Reconstruction and Development.
   A U.N. trust fund for Chernobyl, established in 1991, is virtually
empty, and billions are needed to come to grip with health and
contamination problems that grow worse each year.
   The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates it would need about
$200 million over the next 20 years for its activities alone, but
Hansen said he would happy with a few million.
   The contaminated area in the Ukraine and Belarus is about 61,780
square miles, the size of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
   At least nine million people in Ukraine and Belarus as well as
Russia have been affected by the disaster, with several million living
in areas with radiation that is excessive in the long term.  About
400,000 people had been evacuated from heaviy contaminated zones and
cannot return for about 30 years.
   Hansen said the disaster had a beginning but no middle nor end,
with cancer and death rates rising along with mental trauma,
especially for those still in contaminated areas.
   He said relief groups had to "start from scratch" in giving any
psychological treatment, an underdeveloped field in the former Soviet
Union, for problems such as anxiety, depression, divorce and
alcholism.
   "And when the enemy is invisible, as is the case for radiation,
these fears become all the more difficult to counter and weigh all the
more heavily on the minds of the people," he said.
   Data available from U.N. and other sources shows:
   * Death rates are 30 percent higher for those in contaminated
     regions in the Ukraine compared to the rest of the country.
   * Birth rates in Belarus have fallen 50 percent.
   * Thyroid cancer, particularly among children, is up 285 percent
     in Belarus.
   * About 7,000 in Russia alone who helped put out the fire and seal
     the reactor are believed to have died and 38 percent are 
     recovering from some kind of disease.
   * Belarus, the most heavily affected country, spends 20 percent of
     its budget on dealing with Chernobyl's aftermath;  Ukraine 
     devotes four percent and Russia, one percent.