Hiroshima, Nagasaki Survivors Still Treated for Radiation Related Illnesses

Decades after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, out of the nearly 200,000 survivors still alive, thousands continue to be treated for radiation relation sickness, many of whom die of cancer, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday on the 70th anniversary of the day the US dropped atomic bombs on the two Japanese cities.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — In 2014, the Japanese Red Cross Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Survivors Hospitals treated some 10,687 atomic bomb survivors, ICRC said.

"Seventy years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japanese Red Cross Society hospitals are still treating thousands of survivors for long-term health effects, with nearly two-thirds of deaths among them due to cancer," the ICRC statement read.

Last year, nearly 63 percent of the survivors died of cancer — primarily lung, stomach, liver, intestinal cancer and leukemia, ICRC added.

More than half of all deaths at the Nagasaki Red Cross hospital were caused by cancer in 2014, according to the Red Cross.

"Even after so many decades, we continue to see the catastrophic health impact from the use of nuclear weapons on these two cities," ICRC President Peter Maurer said. "What more compelling argument could there be for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons, especially as most of the bombs in the arsenals of nuclear armed states today are more powerful and destructive?"

According to the ICRC, in 1956 the Japanese Red Cross Society began overseeing hospitals for atomic bomb survivors first in Hiroshima and later in 1969 in Nagasaki. Thus far, the hospitals have helped over 2.5 million outpatient visits by atomic bomb survivors and more than 2.6 million admissions of survivors as inpatients.

This week marks the remembrance of the 1945 WWII bombings by United States Air Force that killed more over 130,000 people in two separate air raids on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9.