"The Chernobyl catastrophe became planetary and even now continues to take its toll on people's health and the environment," the health ministry said in a statement.
On April 26, 1986, reactor number 4 at Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, contaminating large parts of Europe but especially the then-Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.
Over 25,000 "liquidators", mostly Ukrainians, Russians and Belarussians who worked on the ruined reactor and constructed a concrete sarcophagus enclosing it, lost their lives, according to official figures.
The official UN toll in September 2005 set the number of the accident's victims in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus at 4,000, but the figure had been contested by non-governmental organisations.
Officially, Ukraine alone numbers 2.3 million people qualified as "having suffered from the catastrophe."
