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.