Chernobyl Nuclear Accident Congressional Hearings Transcript

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since about 1991, when President Bush began the initiative of fuel
assistance, there's been a fairly steady acceleration. I think President
Clinton and his administration have been quite supportive, as
witnessed in their activity at the G—7 and so forth.
However, in all of our discussions with our counterparts in
Ukraine we understand that, per capita, and even in absolute
terms, relatively small European countries like Holland, and then
large countries like Germany, have actually been more forthcoming
with assistance. I think that's one aspect of the problem that, in
absolute terms of government activity, that I think there can be an
acceleration at the U.S. Grovernment level. We've been quite disturbed
by reports that we've heard from some of our colleagues at
USAID that there may actually be a trimming back of humanitarian
assistance in particular, in the years to come.
Not just in terms of the overall cutbacks in USAID, but percentage-wise,
that the amount of aid that would go toward medical programs
may be cut back. We think that's a mistake, partly because
I think a lot of the programs that have been operating in the medical
arena have been extremely cost-efficient. I think that there's
been a tremendous amount of creativity in leveraging a great deal
of aid from the corporate sector and at the grass roots level.
If we want to get literally more bang for the buck, and, to put
it more in humane terms, to save more lives per dollar invested,
I think there's a tremendous amount that the U.S. Government can
contribute.
The other problem is really in the area of disguised aid. As Ambassador
Shcherbak noted, a lot of activity that is happening at the
government level actually is overlaid over private, voluntary activity
that would already be taking place. I think that it's important
for our government—and that's something that the recipients are
aware of. I think it's very important for the government itself to
take a primal role, and not to run the risk of piggy-backing onto
just private, voluntary efforts. So that I think there is more that
we can do generally.
Mr. Smith. Have you or your organization been concerned about
people resettling in the region and being back in harm's way perhaps
infecting, or putting at risk, more children?
Mr. KuzMA. Yes. We're very worried, not just about the resettlement
back into the Chomobyl zone, but that wide swath of communities
that live just on the periphery of the dead zone, and in fairly
highly contaminated regions.
In economically strapped times, these folks are definitely going
to have an incentive to bring their produce, from their villages, into
major urban centers, whether it be Kiyv, or Chemihiv, or Lviv, or
wherever.
Again, anecdotally, we've received a lot of reports from our colleagues
at the Institute of Pediatrics, and several of the key hospitals
in Kyiv and Chemihiv, that there has been a high incidence
of gastrointestinal disorders, including stomach cancers, intestinal
cancers.
There is growing fear among many of our colleagues that have
gone into this region, and have done outreach—and now, we're
doing much more of that work in rural areas in northern
Vynnytsia, and so forth. There's a tremendous fear of the constant