Forgotten victims.

On April 26, 1986, at 1:23 AM local time in the obscure Ukrainian town of Pripyat, the number four reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded. It was, by any reckoning, the most catastrophic human-made environmental disaster in history.

Ten years later, the victims of Chernobyl are almost forgotten. The United States continues to use the disaster to pressure the governments of Eastern Europe to dismantle their nuclear weapons and build reactors along more "safer" American models. And the governments of the affected nations, in turn, continue to use Chernobyl to extract economic aid from the major industrial nations. Meanwhile, untold millions of dollars in international public- and private-sector relief have been misused, and the full extent of Chernobyl's damage--both in terms of human casualties and environmental destruction--may never be known for certain. Indeed, the former United Nations Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, Peter Hansen, showed a definite flair for understatement in November 1995 when he said, regarding the Chernobyl cleanup and relief efforts, "It is not easy to see the end here. In fact, we don't really know where we are in the process."

We do know some things, however. One is that an international Chernobyl trust fund, established in 1991, is out of money. Another is that governments, international agencies, and private-sector relief organizations prefer challenging each others' statistics to taking concerted action. And a third is that anniversary conferences have not addressed why relief efforts flagged and what, specifically, could be done to deliver results.

No one disagrees with the fact that early disinformation from the Soviet government laid the groundwork for today's impasse. Shortly after the disaster, Soviet officials announced that only 31 lives were lost, that only a partial reactor meltdown had occurred, and that helicopters would smother the blazing core with 5,000 tons of sand, lead, boron, and clay. As a safety measure, 135,000 people were to be evacuated from the surrounding area.

But according to a doctoral dissertation presented at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in January 1994, the helicopters never hit the target and the reactor burned itself out. Alexander Sich, the researcher, writes further that between 184 million and 250 million curies of radioactive materials were released--not the 50 million curies claimed by Soviet officials. (A curie is the amount of radioactivity contained in one gram of radium. Ten-millionths of a plutonium curie, if inhaled, can cause cancer.)

A 40-mile-wide area around the damaged site, designated the "special zone," was then "permanently" evacuated to seal off contamination. But Dr. Anthony Robbins, a public-health professor at Boston University, told the New York Times in April 1990 that, by then, the contamination was already widespread and that "everyone you talk to is telling you that every time they look, the situation is worse than before."

What Soviet epidemiology experts and others reportedly saw were farm animals born without eyes, heads, or internal organs. They also theorized that children, especially those born between 1981 and 1987, would be increasingly susceptible to thyroid cancers and other diseases. This was in addition to noticeable increases in the number of adults suffering from stress-related psychological disabilities.

In 1996, Ukrainian officials estimated that 7 percent of the country's 600,000-square kilometer area--an area equivalent in size to the Netherlands--has been rendered unusable. And the Ukraine is not the worst-affected former Soviet republic. Prevailing winds carried the radioactive Chernobyl cloud over Belarus and parts of Russia to Scandinavia and then blew it back to Belarus again. The result of these two exposures was some 22 percent of Belarus' agricultural land affected by radiation. Minsk now puts the direct and indirect costs resulting from Chernobyl at $29.6 billion.

From the United Nations' perspective and that of every government concerned with Chernobyl, relief efforts and economic crises throughout Eastern Europe cannot be separated. Given that the republics of the former Soviet Union were in no way prepared for self-rule, fiscal emergencies may continue for at least a generation. Belarus had not been independent since the mid-sixteenth century; the Ukraine had never been free of foreign domination during its entire history; and neither country had any experience with privatization or free-market economics. To expect former apparatchiks to organize efficient economies that could respond to disasters on this scale was simply unrealistic.

So from what source would relief monies come? The response in Belarus and the Ukraine was the same--printing presses. Between November 1992 and November 1993, Ukraine's currency in circulation shot up from 46.2 billion coupons to 12.5 trillion coupons. In 1994, Belarus' inflation rate reached 2,220 percent.

Today, Belarus dedicates 20 percent of its annual budget to Chernobyl; the Ukraine, 15 percent. These allocations come nowhere near covering the actual needs. Faced with staggering obstacles in obtaining work, food, and shelter in contaminated and uncontaminated areas alike, the citizens of both nations do whatever they can to survive. Those living near Chernobyl and in the Belarusian forests collect wood--a major repository of radionuclides--to sell as building material or firewood. The Ukraine exports contaminated food, which is then processed and returned to Ukraine as ostensibly clean food.

Returning evacuees and an estimated 600,000 "liquidators"--soldiers and civilians ordered after the accident to "clean" radioactive debris--refuse to leave areas that are dangerous. They qualify for special financial benefits known as coffin money, because the greater the health risks, the larger the payments.

As a result of the Chernobyl disaster, by November 1991, 11 international governmental and private organizations had joined in efforts to improve the safety of nuclear power plants. Over 70 of the International Atomic Energy Agency's 112 member states adopted two conventions to enhance international cooperation and thus ensure both timely notification and emergency assistance in the event of an accident.

A third objective, however, evidently was to play down Chernobyl's consequences. It would be difficult for politicians to sell voters on the idea of nuclear power as a safe energy source if the media were to report the constantly rising Chernobyl-related disease rates. Billions of dollars, pounds, francs, marks, and yen were riding on public perception.

Such enormous potential economic losses help explain the stunning differences between the statistics and interpretations offered by various governments, scientists, and reporters concerning the disaster. For example, in April 1992 a Ukrainian minister claimed between 6,000 and 8,000 deaths in that country as a result of the accident. Western experts set the death toll at between 500 and 7,000 from cancer and/or radiation-related diseases. But in April 1995, Kiev claimed two million Ukrainians ill and 125,000 dead.

Despite an acknowledged threat of increases in the incidence of thyroid cancer, Dr. Roy Shore, a radiation epidemiologist at New York University's School of Medicine, suggested that thyroid cancers could have existed in some cases before the accident and were discovered mainly because of greater attention. Three years later, however, the World Health Organization advised that thyroid cancer among children had increased 100-fold in some affected areas.

Another dissenter, Belarus' leading hematologist Yevgeni Ivanov, was reported in the Chicago Tribune in February 1993 as insisting that "there was no increase in the incidence of leukemia, either in Minsk or in the country overall, from 1986 to 1991." But in November 1994, Ukrainian cytologist Alexei Gostyev concluded that minimal exposure to radiation has had a a much more alarming effect on human, animal, and plant chromosomes than previously thought. Gostyev believed his research to be a breakthrough with profound implications for public health. But as he lay dying of radiation disease, he complained in anguish that few people in the scientific community took his findings seriously.

In 1991, the United Nations began a major fundraising campaign for Chernobyl relief with a "pledging conference." It raised a paltry $1 million. Major prospective donors cited the controversy over statistics as a main reason for not giving. Gennady Grushevoy, chair of Belarus' Children of Chernobyl charitable fund, countered unsuccessfully by warning: "There may be no evidence up to now, but we believe we will discover someday just how harmful sustained exposure to small doses of radiation can be."

An American physician named Robert Gale, in Moscow in February 1993 to help start a Chernobyl-related charity (this one an international lottery also called Children of Chernobyl), observed: "These charities have become an industry. I have stayed away from 99 percent of them because there's no way of knowing for certain what's going on with them."

Gale agreed to work with the lottery "because I have been assured by outside monitors that 25 percent of the money raised will actually be used to help sick people, and there's real need to improve health care throughout the former Soviet Union." (But in August 1987, Gale had told the Reuters news service that "more than 90 percent of those injured in the accident are well and most have been discharged from treatment.")

At present, Belarusian and Urkainian physicians are not only suspicious of each other but of foreign physicians as well. Dr. Tatiana Kozarezova of the Children's Oncological and Hematological Hospital in Minsk says: "There are those who use our difficulties for their own advantage. Some people are trying to build up their reputations by making themselves the stars of Chernobyl. In other cases, who knows where the relief aid goes? There's no effective monitoring of the charities yet."

American nonprofit relief agencies have been sending "in-kind" medical supplies to Belarus and the Ukraine. The donors--pharmaceutical corporations and hospitals--do not part with cash, only with goods. This does not reflect badly on the soliciting agencies, corporations, or medical institutions, however; the supplies are safe and would be destroyed if not donated.

Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine calculate that American hospitals discard 2,000 tons--or $200 million worth--of unused surgical supplies every year. Because most manufacturers' warranties expire once a surgical item enters an operating room, even unused equipment is disposed of. The amount of recoverable materials averages $14 per operation, and there are 14 million operations performed in the United States each year.

Pharmaceutical houses also discard unsold items that reach their shelf date but are nonetheless usable. Alert charities solicit these items and ship them overseas with the help of public agencies in Washington, D.C. But many Eastern Europeans believe they are receiving unsafe medications. Then, too, the donated items are often sold on the black market in Moscow and in other cities.

University of California historian Martin Malia writes that, contrary to what many Sovietologists predicted, communism's end turned out to be "a brusque collapse, a total implosion, of a sort unheard of in history." Washington reasoned that the Soviet collapse could be used to speed nuclear disarmament. Washington further saw opportunities to micromanage the Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian market economies and to tie Chernobyl relief efforts to nonprofit enterprise, as in America--all of this immediately, simultaneously, and spectacularly.

The first step was to refinance beltway agencies. A 1993 report, "International Exchange and Training Activities of the U.S. Government," reveals that more than 100 international exchange and training programs, administered by 23 federal departments and agencies, went into action. "Operating in its now-traditional role of middleman between actual provider and victims, {agency} coffers have opened wide," the report further advises, noting a cost to American taxpayers that year of nearly $1.5 billion.

What did the money buy? Certainly, progress in Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian nuclear disarmament. But additionally, proof that attempts to hurriedly link government policies, business, and relief can lead to the worst of all three worlds. Federal programs become vulnerable to political meddling, businesses operate without accountability either to investors or to governments, and no rules and regulations govern nonprofit operations.

A decade after the accident, relief efforts thus have provided a textbook example of how not to deal with a regional catastrophe. Private-sector donors have not contributed generously, and the United Nations--which should be at the forefront of relief efforts--deludes itself into thinking that gala celebrations alone can stimulate giving. A September 1995 report of the Secretary General to the General Assembly advises: "The tenth anniversary of Chernobyl on 26 April 1996 offers an excellent opportunity to galvanize widespread media interest in the problem."

But publicity will accomplish nothing by itself; neither will commiserating with the victims. What is needed instead are commitments from the United Nations, Kiev, Minsk, Moscow, and Washington to tell the whole story--not just those parts that suit vested interests.

Meanwhile, consider that the International Monetary Fund will not lend funds to Belarus because of that country's chaotic economy; the World Health Organization can't spare one dollar per Belarussian child born between 1990 and 2000 to ensure that none born after 2000 will suffer an iodine deficiency disorder; and, on May 24, 1996, the Wall Street Journal reported that the facility at Chernobyl had 27 "incidents" during the previous year.