“It wasn’t like being in a hospital. Even the sickest kids had fun.”
Ukrainian Roman Gerus has very fond memories of an experience that arose from a catastrophe.
We are talking about explosion of one of the reactors of the nuclear power plant of Chernobyl on April 26, 1986, a tragedy whose 40th anniversary is being celebrated this week.
Gerus was one of the more than 23 thousand children affected by the accident who received medical treatment in Cuba.
The program, sponsored by the Cuban Ministry of Health, ran from 1990 to 2011.
What was this pioneering experience like?
By the sea
“I’ve been to Cuba three times,” Roman Gerus tells BBC News Mundo.
“In the first one, I was 12 years old, I stayed for six months; in the second one, I was 14 years old and I stayed three months; in the last one, I was 15 years old and I stayed only 45 days.”
“Each time was different, but I liked them all. It’s something I remember with love — I want to go back to Cuba with my family to introduce the island,” he says.
He emphasizes the beauty of the scenery in which he landed to treat the skin disease that developed many years after the Chernobyl accident.
This young man, now 27 years old, wasn’t even born when the disaster occurredbut his family lived relatively close to the old nuclear power plant.
“When I was 10 or 11 years old, the doctors detected white spots on my skin. It was vitiligo. We tried to treat it in Ukraine, but the doctors said it wasn’t that easy, that I needed expensive medicine and they didn’t guarantee help”, he recalls.
“Someone told my mother that there was a program to go to Cuba. She didn’t believe it at first because they said it was free, but she found out the details and filled out the documents.”
“We waited at least a semester, and suddenly they called to say that I was leaving in two weeks. I couldn’t believe it. My parents were worried because Cuba is very far from Ukraine and I was little, but we decided to go ahead.”
More than 26 thousand patients
The place where Gerus landed was a bathhouse located on Tarará beach, about 30 km east of Havana.
Founded in the 1950s as an upper middle class city, after the Cuban Revolution it became the headquarters of children’s camps for the José Martí Pioneros organization.
The Cuban government rehabilitated the area to accommodate the thousands of patients in the “Children of Chernobyl” program for more than 21 years: from March 29, 1990 to November 24, 2011.
According to data from the Cuban Ministry of Health, a total of 26,114 patients (84% children) came mainly from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus.
The serious difficulties that Cuba faced after the dissolution of the Soviet Union did not interrupt the program.
Different diseases
The Tarará complex had residences for children and their companions, two hospitals, a clinic, an ambulance parking lot, a kitchen, a theater, schools, parks and leisure areas.
15 minutes away, there was also a 2 km long beach.
Patients arrived there with a variety of diseasesfrom cancer, cerebral palsy and dermatological problems to malformations, digestive diseases and psychological disorders.
The program was under the direction of Cuban doctors Julio Medina and Omar García, who classified patients into four groups depending on their situation:
- Children with oncohematological conditions and serious illnesses who required hospitalization and stayed on the island for several months;
- Children with pathologies that required hospitalization but were not considered serious. The stay was around 60 days;
- Children with pathologies that can be treated in an outpatient setting. The stay was 45 to 60 days;
- Relatively healthy children whose stay was 45 and 60 days.
Two zones
The case of Ukrainian Khrystyna Kostenetska, who participated in the program from the age of 12 to 13, corresponded to the fourth group.
“I went to Cuba between 1991 and 1992,” he told BBC News.
“Both times I was there for 40 days — the period in which the human body would have the ability to recover from a low dose of radiation.”
Kostenetska explains that there were two different areas in Tarará: the low camp, where children with more serious health problems stayed; and the high one, aimed at children without apparent health problems, but who lived near Chernobyl.
“We lived in small independent houses, with around 15 children in each. The children in the high camp did not have specific medical treatment, but they checked our vision and took us to the dentist”, he explains.
She has conflicting memories of her time in Tarará.
“I remember an incredible sea, waves, sun, nature and ice cream, but I also remember children with serious health problems,” he explains.
“They were children with vitiligo who had to wear long sleeves and cover themselves from the sun. But despite this, Cuba’s climate cured some of them and accelerated the recovery of many others.”
Sun healer
Gerus was one of the children who made a complete recovery.
“After the second time I went, all the spots turned gray and disappeared. I took some medications, but the main medicine was the Sun,” he says.
“We used to swim a lot, the sea was beautiful. We went with the teachers to the beach, it was part of the treatment. Whenever we wanted, we could go”, recalls Gerus, who also remembers nights with recreational activities such as going to the cinema or the nightclub.
Poorly explained elements
In addition to the good memories of Gerus and Kostenetska and the generally positive view of Gerus’s work, Cuban governmentobviously in Tarará there were also dramatic situations. Especially taking into account those who arrived with more serious illnesses or who were left out of the program.
BBC Ukrainian service correspondent in KievDiana Kuryshko, highlights that the participant selection process was not completely transparent.
“I grew up in a less polluted place, but I vividly remember the consequences of the Chernobyl accident,” explains Kuryshko.
The journalist recalls that this was a period of deep crisis in Ukraine, in which families could not afford plane tickets for children to treat their children. effects of radioactivity.
“When the Cuban government’s program was announced, people were excited, thinking they could send their children there,” he recalls.
“You were very lucky if your son or daughter could go to Cuba. It wasn’t very clear how the participants were chosen. The reality is that many of them were not necessarily from humble families.”
Despite doubts, the perception of Cuban collaboration in Ukraine and other former Soviet republics is positive.
“Although I was little, I was able to understand that the Cubans’ situation was difficult, there was a lot of poverty. But they were always very nice, from the kitchen workers to the teachers, the security managers, the doctors…”, recalls Gerus.
“They were good-hearted people and that was the most important thing.”
*This report was originally published in 2019. The republication marks the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
