A holiday from the poison

ON A Caribbean beach a few miles outside the Cuban capital, Havana, scores of children are playing volleyball and soccer in the sun. Just behind the beach, shaded by palm trees is a compound containing dormitories, play areas, a hospital and hi-tech treatment rooms.

This holiday camp - formerly a summer resort where Havana's high-flying youngsters were rewarded with holidays for hard work - has been turned over to the children of Chernobyl. Look a little more closely at some of the happy kids playing on the beach, and one can see that a number of them have suffered premature baldness - the effect of radiation from the nuclear accident in Chernobyl in 1986.

That is a common complaint, as are sore throats and glandular infections, also attributed to the accident. There is also the occasional extremely uncommon complaint. Doctors at the camp told me they had treated one child who was a hermaphrodite. "He was born with two sexes," said Ivan Ivanovich, the Ukrainian director of the Chernobyl programme. "He has now had a penis inserted and is making good progress. There have been a number of organ transplant operations among the children here. A number have white spots all over their bodies.

"Some have problems with their sight. One girl had her leg twisted 70 degrees. Around 400 have had cancer or blood diseases. The treatments cost $100,000 per child."

The gesture has been made by the Cuban government, which despite severe shortages in Cuba, still likes to help those in need, particularly when they come from the former Soviet bloc. Fifteen thousand have come from the Chernobyl area for stays of several months. Some 300 are there now. For the children, whose ages range from seven to 13, it is an idyllic break from their polluted homeland.

But it is more than a holiday. Doctors are able to study at first hand the effects of radiation, both in the young victims of the nuclear disaster and in those not born at the time but suffering genetic illnesses or the effects of lingering pollution. But the work has caused resentment among the people of Cuba, where medicines are hard to come by. Additionally, it has removed a summer camp which was valued.

When I visited the compound the children were in fine spirits, playing in the sunshine. Mr Ivanovich, who worked at Chernobyl and helped to restore the plant but did not suffer illness, spoke about the work.

"The children get much better in this weather and environment," he said. "I have very much to express my gratitude to the Cubans. No other country would offer such humanitarian help."