Photo: Iain Guest

Mitrovica lead crisis: Romano Them asks for comprehensive information from the UN: “27 May 2008 - A survey, which was produced by the Institute of Public Health in Kosovska Mitrovica at the request of the representatives of the IDP camps in Northern Mitrovica confirmed previous allegations, according to which the lead level in the blood of Romani children living in these camps has remained at an alarmingly high level.

(…)

…levels exceeding the critical ceiling of 45 μg/dL, beyond which doctors recommend chelation therapy. However, if it is confirmed that the indications, “Hi” and “Hi Mnogo” contained in the survey, actually refer to blood levels exceeding 65 μg/dL, which cannot be measured with standard equipment, the number of children with a critically high level of lead contamination in their blood goes up to 38, or 36.5 percent of the surveyed group.

(…) Summer 2005, when NGOs succeeded in mounting pressure and the topic made it into international media headlines, that action was finally taken. By the end of the year, UNMIK decided to relocate the IDPs to the former French military compound, known as Osterode camp, which was entirely refurbished, and the soil decontaminated. Giving up their initial resistance, most of the families moved to the new camp, where a specialised medical treatment was apparently started in September 2006.

Quite ironically, the probes which were collected now, seem to suggest that the lead contamination in the refurbished Osterode camp is still higher than in Cesmin Lug, for which the WHO declared in October 2004, that the situation was worse than in other camps with the levels of lead contamination in the soil exceeding the 359,5 times the safe limits.

(…)

Skender Gusani

In their statement on the recent blood tests, the representatives of the camps, Skender Gusani and Dai Mustafa, write: “World Health Organization (WHO) did testing of the children’s blood lead levels and the results shown that the Roma camp Ostorode is save from lead, but the results of those testing were never shown to public, not even to the parents of the tested children.””

(Via Romano Them.)