Maura Lerner / Star Tribune

Dr. Vasil Pasechnik has been treating the children of Chernobyl for 13 years. Now, he's even treating the children of the children who lived through the world's worst nuclear power accident.

The Ukrainian pediatrician came to Minnesota on Tuesday as part of a campaign to remind the West that the disaster isn't over yet, and that his country still needs help in coping with its legacy.

"The world's attention is always centered around the latest crisis," said Pasechnik, 62, who heads a medical center for disabled children 40 miles from Chernobyl. "People have forgotten . . . but the effects of Chernobyl have not stopped. The effects were not for just a year. They were for tens of years."

Pasechnik spent Tuesday in Rochester, Minn., meeting with doctors at the Mayo Clinic, one of four medical centers that he's scheduled to visit during a two-week tour sponsored by LifeNets, a small relief agency in Indianapolis.

His aim, he said through an interpreter, is to "develop relationships between people. Where this goes, I don't think anyone knows for sure."

Pasechnik said thyroid cancer and other illnesses have surged since the explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in April 1986. And the concern is that many people in the surrounding areas are still being exposed to radioactive material in the ground and ground water.

He said he still remembers the burning in his throat, and the metallic taste in his mouth, right after the accident, when he helped oversee the removal of children from Chernobyl, which was then part of the Soviet Union.

He earned the wrath of the Soviet government when he became one of the first to call publicly for emergency measures in the days after the accident, when officials were trying to minimize the dangers. He had urged an emergency distribution of potassium iodide to children to protect them from possible thyroid cancer from radiation exposure. But by the time officials responded, three weeks later, it was too late to have any effect, he said. Pasechnik himself was disciplined and removed as the area's director of pediatrics for "creating a panic."

In 1996 the Ukrainian government estimated that 2,500 people who had helped in the cleanup efforts had died from radiation poisoning and related illnesses.

Today Pasechnik proudly carries a red card that identifies him as one of the thousands who helped in the aftermath of the disaster.

About 40 percent of the children at his clinic, the Centre for Medical and Social Rehabilitation of Disabled Children, are considered victims of Chernobyl, he said.

"Right now, children are being born to those who were children themselves at the time," he said. The rate of birth defects has doubled since the disaster, even as the birth rate has dropped dramatically because parents fear "having children that might be deformed," he said.

Before the accident, there hadn't been a single case of thyroid cancer in children in 25 years, he said. Since then, there have been 49 cases. Other types of disorders, such as respiratory and central nervous system problems, have doubled. The psychological fallout is expected to remain for years.

"It is our government that should watch out for its own people, especially children," he said. "But all of us doctors have come to the point where we're not ashamed to say, look, we just don't have [enough resources]."

-- LifeNets, which sponsored Pasechnik's trip, is seeking contributions, although it is not a registered nonprofit agency. It can be reached at 1-317-707-5021.  

[Since this article, LifeNets has become incorporated and has been designated by the IRS as 501 (c) (3) publicly held charity]