Towns surrounding Chernobyl are still feeling the effects of radiation poisoning nearly 30 years after one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters.
One Ohio University student, Kelsey Higgins, hopes to help.
The neighboring region of Belarus was hit particularly hard when the Chernobyl power plant caught fire and released toxins into the air on April 26, 1986.
As much as “99 percent of the land of Belarus has been contaminated to varying degrees above internationally accepted levels,” according to the Chernobyl Children’s Foundation.
Higgins will visit the The Vesnova Children’s Mental Asylum, which cares for children with radiation-related mental and physical handicaps, on Feb. 21.
Birth defects among children in the area are common. According to the Foundation, children born since 1986 face a 200 percent increase in birth defects and a 250 percent increase in congenital birth deformities.
Higgins will visit the asylum as Ohio’s 2013 Rose of Tralee, an organization to commend “the intelligence, compassion and independence of modern Irish women,” according to its website.
Higgins fundraised to support her own travel costs and to provide food, bedding and clothing for the children in Belarus.
“We’re giving them the love and care that they desperately need,” Higgins said.
She, along with other elected “Roses of Tralee,” will spend time playing with and nurturing the children of the hospital, many of whom are orphans whose families were not able to support them.
Higgins is required to bring her own food and water to avoid radiation contamination.
Her goal is to raise $3,000. So far, she’s raised slightly more than $1,500.
Those who would like to donate to the cause can visit Razoo.com and search “Chernobyl Children.”
@CarolineBartels
cb536511@ohiou.edu
