The United Nations Industrial Development Organization, UNIDO, will now have to do without its principal paymaster - the United States. At the UNIDO general conference held in the first week of December at Vienna, the US announced its withdrawal after expressing its dissatisfaction over the agency's continued ineffectiveness, bureaucracy and over- staffed state. It is feared that the US move may lead to the collapse of the agency.
The Chernobyl nuclear disaster which occured in the summer of 1986 has not only led to an 100 per cent increase of thyroid cancer among children exposed to its harmful radiation. but could also result in the rise of leukemia. The alarming details were disclosed at the recent World Health Organization (WHO) conference at Geneva which was a 10th anniversary attempt to assess the long term impact of the disaster.
The rate of thyroid cancer in children is a general yardstick to measure the impact of radiation exposure as the cancer rarely occurs in children.
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