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bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
=== News Update ===
washingtonpost.com
Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 11, 2006; A12
A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more
people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003
than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.
The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random
sampling of households throughout the country, is far higher than ones
produced by other groups, including Iraq's government.
It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that
President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times
the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based
Iraq Body Count research group.
The surveyors said they found a steady increase in mortality since the
invasion, with a steeper rise in the last year that appears to reflect a
worsening of violence as reported by the U.S. military, the news media
and civilian groups. In the year ending in June, the team calculated
Iraq's mortality rate to be roughly four times what it was the year
before the war.
Of the total 655,000 estimated "excess deaths," 601,000 resulted from
violence and the rest from disease and other causes, according to the
study. This is about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout
the country.
The survey was done by Iraqi physicians and overseen by epidemiologists
at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. The
findings are being published online today by the British medical journal
the Lancet.
The same group in 2004 published an estimate of roughly 100,000 deaths
in the first 18 months after the invasion. That figure was much higher
than expected, and was controversial. The new study estimates that about
500,000 more Iraqis, both civilian and military, have died since then --
a finding likely to be equally controversial.
Both this and the earlier study are the only ones to estimate mortality
in Iraq using scientific methods. The technique, called "cluster
sampling," is used to estimate mortality in famines and after natural
disasters.
While acknowledging that the estimate is large, the researchers believe
it is sound for numerous reasons. The recent survey got the same
estimate for immediate post-invasion deaths as the early survey, which
gives the researchers confidence in the methods. The great majority of
deaths were also substantiated by death certificates.
"We're very confident with the results," said Gilbert Burnham, a Johns
Hopkins physician and epidemiologist.
A Defense Department spokesman did not comment directly on the estimate.
"The Department of Defense always regrets the loss of any innocent life
in Iraq or anywhere else," said Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros. "The
coalition takes enormous precautions to prevent civilian deaths and
injuries."
He added that "it would be difficult for the U.S. to precisely determine
the number of civilian deaths in Iraq as a result of insurgent activity.
The Iraqi Ministry of Health would be in a better position, with all of
its records, to provide more accurate information on deaths in Iraq."
Ronald Waldman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who worked at
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for many years, called
the survey method "tried and true," and added that "this is the best
estimate of mortality we have."
This viewed was echoed by Sarah Leah Whitson, an official of Human
Rights Watch in New York, who said, "We have no reason to question the
findings or the accuracy" of the survey.
"I expect that people will be surprised by these figures," she said. "I
think it is very important that, rather than questioning them, people
realize there is very, very little reliable data coming out of Iraq."
The survey was conducted between May 20 and July 10 by eight Iraqi
physicians organized through Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. They
visited 1,849 randomly selected households that had an average of seven
members each. One person in each household was asked about deaths in the
14 months before the invasion and in the period after.
The interviewers asked for death certificates 87 percent of the time;
when they did, more than 90 percent of households produced certificates.
According to the survey results, Iraq's mortality rate in the year
before the invasion was 5.5 deaths per 1,000 people; in the post-
invasion period it was 13.3 deaths per 1,000 people per year. The
difference between these rates was used to calculate "excess deaths."
Of the 629 deaths reported, 87 percent occurred after the invasion. A
little more than 75 percent of the dead were men, with a greater male
preponderance after the invasion. For violent post-invasion deaths, the
male-to-female ratio was 10-to-1, with most victims between 15 and 44
years old.
Gunshot wounds caused 56 percent of violent deaths, with car bombs and
other explosions causing 14 percent, according to the survey results. Of
the violent deaths that occurred after the invasion, 31 percent were
caused by coalition forces or airstrikes, the respondents said.
Burnham said that the estimate of Iraq's pre-invasion death rate -- 5.5
deaths per 1,000 people -- found in both of the Hopkins surveys was
roughly the same estimate used by the CIA and the U.S. Census Bureau. He
said he believes that attests to the accuracy of his team's results.
He thinks further evidence of the survey's robustness is that the
steepness of the upward trend it found in excess deaths in the last two
years is roughly the same tendency found by other groups -- even though
the actual numbers differ greatly.
An independent group of researchers and biostatisticians based in
England produces the Iraq Body Count. It estimates that there have been
44,000 to 49,000 civilian deaths since the invasion. An Iraqi
nongovernmental organization estimated 128,000 deaths between the
invasion and July 2005.
The survey cost about $50,000 and was paid for by Massachusetts
Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies.
Staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.
source:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442_pf.html
===
-muslim voice-
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