Japanese medical team to help Kazak nuclear test victims

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Japanese medical team to help Kazak nuclear test victims

NAGASAKI, July 29 (Kyodo) - A Japanese medical team will go to 
Kazakstan to begin medical checks in April next year on residents 
exposed to radiation from Soviet-era nuclear tests, Nagasaki 
doctors said Saturday. 

Medical experts, mainly from Nagasaki University and Hiroshima 
University, plan to conduct cancer checkups on residents around a 
Soviet nuclear test site west of the eastern Kazakstan city of 
Semey, which was called Semipalatinsk by the Soviets, so those 
diagnosed with early-stage cancer can be treated, the doctors 
said. 

''We should make the contribution because we are medical experts 
in atom-bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki,'' said Shunichi 
Yamashita, a professor at Nagasaki University's institute on 
illnesses and other complications arising from atom-bombing. 

The team will also instruct Kazak doctors on medical checks and 
treatment so that they can set up a thorough medical examination 
system in three years, they said. 

The team's dispatch is part of a project funded by Japan's official 
development assistance to help Kazak nuclear testing sufferers. 

Under the project, instruments worth about 650 million yen will be 
sent to the region, including computers and cancer check buses. 

According to a 1998 U.N. report, the Soviet Union exploded about 
500 nuclear devices at the test site over a 40-year period, and 1.6 
million people were exposed to radiation from the tests. 

The Kazak government has said some 120,000 people in the 
central Asian country have suffered radiation-related illnesses 
including trouble in the thyroid gland. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sandy Perle					Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100   				    	
Director, Technical				Extension 2306 				     	
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