Dr Darko Laketic said that the tragedy that was the 1999 bombing cannot and must not be forgotten by Serbia’s history, nor minimized or changed to fit the needs and interests of big or small powers. He said that Serbia is a victim that must, for its own and civilizational reasons, keep the truth alive as a lesson and a warning to itself and others.

Dr Darko Laketic presented the results of the investigation the Commission conducted in cooperation with “Dr Milan Jovanovic Batut” Public Health Institute, to analyse the health of children born before and after the NATO bombing and the incidence and prevalence of malignant diseases among them.

“Children were the focus of the investigation because the abundance of risk factors among adults, such as smoking, obesity, diabetes, makes it difficult to detect the one that triggered the onset of the disease with any degree of certainty, while among children there are no significant risk factors”, said Laketic.

The method used was age-period-cohort analysis i.e. age-specific disease incidence and prevalence. Starting from the fact that the average risk of malignant diseases at a specific age is similar in different generations, the incidence of a significant discrepancy among some generations born after 1999 confirms that they had been exposed to a factor that made them more susceptible to certain malignant diseases, said Laketic. Here those were mainly blood diseases, occurring most often among 5-9 year-olds. Laketic went on to say that susceptibility to solid tumours among 15-18 year-olds is statistically significant, but more concrete results will become available once sufficient research of the group has been completed.

The Commission was set up at the proposal of National Assembly Speaker Maja Gojkovic to conduct a serious investigation into the matter and ascertain the effects of the depleted uranium and toxins released by conventional weapons on human health and the environment.