Chernobyl Children in Need Supporting needy children in and around the village of Ozarichi,Belarus.

Ozarichi (alternative spellings: Azerichi or Ozerichi) is a small town (called a 'village' in Belarus) with some 4000 inhabitants. It is located in The South Gomel Region of Belarus. It is 3 hours' drive from the capital Minsk.

Southern Gomel area is the most contaminated region of Belarus, in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear radiation accident. Click here for a very detailed history of Gomel Region.

Ozarichi is located some 40+ kilometres north of the now-closed nuclear plant just outside the exclusion zone, which has been evacuated due to the massive contamination close to the plant.

This small town has three schools, a 'main' one for children between 7 and 16, a special needs school for children with a wide range of medical, welfare and educational problems and lastly an orphanage/ kindergarten for those youngsters without parents, many of them dead as a direct result of the effects of radiation sickness

Belarus is still a very poor second-world Communist bankrupted by the Chernobyl disaster which incredibly uses up 22% of the nation's G.D.P. annually, such is the ongoing legacy of this worst peacetime nuclear accident. Families are almost all very poor in the Gomel region, and many are seriously affected by medical illnesses and disabilities caused by cumulative overdoses of locally high radiation levels.

High doses of radiation are present in the water supply, in the soil and therefore the crops they grow to eat, and in the atmosphere they breathe, and is therefore inescapable, since the affected population is too large (involving millions of people) and too scattered to be resettled outside the extensive contaminated regions, which comprises virtually the entire southern half of the country.

Unfortunately, the after effects are continuing even today due to contaminated soils (and therefore food grown in the area) and also genetic factors (with babies born with a wide range of disabilities, many of them life-threatening).As a result ,the local schools are burdened with huge medical problems; children who are very sick with thyroid cancer and cancer-related illnesses.

Please click on the links below to read the touching account of the visits by one of the trustees to Ozarichi and to one family in particular:

Visit to Ozarichi

Visit to a poor family

Below are other links with information about Ozarichi. Most sites relate to the presence of a German concentration camp in the area during the Second World War:

http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/bobruisk/ozarichi.htm

http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-01/tgmwc-01-01-06.html

http://www.president.gov.by/gosarchives/evov/ef_kin1.htm

http://gomel.lk.net/history.html Gomel History

http://www.google.com/search?q=Ozarichi&num=10 Google search