Brookhaven now has 26 years of medical research findings and experience
in the field with the seople of Rongelap and Utirik.
It is recarded,
therefore, as essential that anv health care orcanization that develocs
Sor
Labortory
suture healsh
saze
sf se
seos
soe
“atsecce
Ls”
on past and current medical activities, aswell as recommendations
for the future.
It is estimated that costs to the Medical Desar-ment of
Brookhaven National Laboratory so participate in this shase of she
i
=k wi
in
she ran
=
:.
- The basic
egntsactmuist—inc-uce. reimbursement funds for tha 3rookhaven Nationa, >
Laboratory for participation inthe overall heaith sian contract.
The Brookhaven medical program for the people of Rongelap and Utirik
dasically has been a medical research program, but <his mandata has, of
necessity, ever the years seen expanded to includa care of non-radiation
related diseases.
This has been occasioned by the lack in the past of
adecuate primary medical care in the Marshall Islands.
In 1954, 984 Rengelapese were expesed to fallout. Of these 84 originally
exposed individuals, 50 are still living. There are also scme 500 to
600 unexpesed rongelapese, nade up of descendants of the exposed group
plus the Marshallese who have Rongelapese blood or marriage affiliation.
About 500 of the unexposed Rongelapese have been used on occasion as a
“comparison” group to the exposed population.
The original Utirik exposed group consisted of 158 individuals, of which
120 still are alive. Another 500 unexpesed Otirixese, made up of descendants
of the exposed group and Marshallese with Utirik blood or marriage
affiliation, also fall into the Utirik catagory. Some 375 of this
larger group have been studied as a “comparison” group to the exposed
Utirikese.
(>)
Bikini
Bikini Atoll was the site of 23 U.S. atmospheric tests.
The 170 Bixinians
resident there in 1946 were removed from the atoll in March 1946 prior
to the start of the tasting program. After several years of very unsatisfactory
resettlement efforts in other sarts of the Northern Marshalls, che
Bikinians were resettled in March 1948 on the isolated island of Kili in
the southern Marshalls. Thus, from March 1948 onward the main body cf
the people of Bikini have lived well outside the zone of the nuclear
tests.