Pripyat Hospital No. 126, Chernobyl

Hospital MsCh-126 Medico-Sanitary sits on Druzhby Narodov Street (translation: Friendship of the People Street). “Pripyat Hospital No. 126” is the name more commonly used for this place. This hospital served the inhabitants of Pripyat and the workers of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The six-story hospital could accommodate 410 patients and had 3 clinics.

Firefighters that were first on the scene of the meltdown at Reactor No. 4 were taken here, and attempts to decontaminate them was undertaken in the basement. These firefighters were later transported to hospitals in Moscow, where specialists in Acute Radiation Sickness were based. Their highly contaminated clothes were left in the basement of Hospital No. 126, which was later sealed. Even after over 30 years radiation levels in the basement remain lethally high sending dosimeters off the scale, reading up to a maximum 999 millisieverts per hour. Background radiation in the rest of the building was 0.02 millisieverts per hour.

A maternity ward with baby cots can be found on one of the upper floors of Pripyat Hospital No. 126. A small child’s sheep toy lies on the mattress. Other rooms feature various medical paraphernalia; beds, examination chairs, bottles, jars and rare pieces of surgical equipment.