Not many people know that there was a second group of firefighters who were sent to Kyiv Hospital. It is extremely sad that the famous miniseries missed this powerful story as well. The firefighters were taken to what is now the Kyiv Institute of Radiology and Oncology, headed by the Chief Radiologist of Ukraine, Dr. Leonid Kindzelsky. Dr. Kindzelsky was a man of a very strong character and decided to act differently openly refusing to use the method used in Moscow. Anna Gubareva, an oncologist at the Institute of Radiology and Oncology in Kyiv recalled the first days after the Chornobyl meltdown: “Our professor, Leonid Kindzelskiy, was the Chief Radiologist of Ukraine. I was then a graduate student in the Department of Systemic Tumor Diseases and was just starting my postgraduate studies at what is now the Cancer Institute. When I came to the meeting, there was an almost military situation in the Institute: the first groups of explosion victims arrived on April 27. Leonid Kindzelskiy with other doctors equipped with dosimetrists went to the Chornobyl nuclear power station; they selected patients with radiation sickness symptoms. At least 191 people arrived at our institute; now nobody knows the exact number, because all the medical records were taken by the KGB. It was secret information; we were forced to sign a non-disclosure document.
Leonid Kindzelskiy had his own ideas on how to treat the victims. It was immediately clear that there is not only gamma radiation but also radioactive isotopes. People inhaled all that, it was on their skin. We changed their clothes, washed their skin, and gave them infusions for a whole day. We did not have enough pajamas for all patients; we dressed them in women’s shirts, in women’s dressing gowns. Of course, those clothes did not fit, because firefighters and workers were physically strong men. When the blood tests of liquidators were getting worse, we transmitted bone marrow to them. Almost all the patients we had in the Institute survived.
Dr. Robert Gale from the USA was considered a specialist in the field of bone marrow transplants and he was invited to help Chornobyl liquidators in Moscow. Everyone knew that he was a Professor but no one tried to establish if he had a medical education. At that time, they worshiped the foreigners. The first group of victims was sent to Dr. Angelina Guskova in Moscow. But Dr. Gale made a mistake – they were killing a patient’s bone marrow first, and only then implanted the donor’s bone marrow which naturally did not engraft and the patients died.
We did not do it, did not kill the patients’ bone marrow, which is why when we injected stem cells, the foreign bone marrow got rejected, but the patients’ own bone marrow after some rest started to work. And the boys survived. I do not know if Dr. Gale realized his mistake after his visit to Kyiv, but right after his visit, a campaign started that we received patients with smaller radiation dosages. That is not true since they sent us the firefighters from the same shift. (Anna Gubareva’s interview in Ukrainian newspaper)
In 2021, a Ukrainian TV channel conducted an interview with Dr. Kindzelsky’s son who is also a Doctor of Medicine but lives in the United States. In it, Dr. Kindzelsky Jr. says that after sticking to his method of treatment despite Moscow’s pressure, his father expected arrest at any moment and had two sets of “arrest kits” ready – one at work and one at home. He also says that the second group of firefighters was also on the airfield with the ‘Moscow’ group but since the second plane did not arrive, they were sent to Kyiv.
Leonid Kindzelsky received high radiation dosage while treating the patients and died in 1999, 13 years after the disaster. Only in 2021, Dr. Kindzelsky was posthumously recognized as a Hero of Ukraine.
American Dr. Gale, Chornobyl firefighters >
Petro Shavrey’s interview with more details about Dr. Kindzelsky and Gale >
