Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has
Reached 655,000
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
10/11/06 "Washington
Post" -- -- 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.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
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