Abstract
Salman Rawaf discusses the implications of the most recent estimate of excess deaths associated with the Iraq war and subsequent occupation in the context of the current situation in Iraq. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary.
Highlights
During and after disasters, the human deaths become numbers in columns for epidemiologists to discover and statisticians to analyse
The Perspective section is for experts to discuss the clinical practice or public health implications of a published study that is freely available online
This Perspective discusses the following new study published in PLOS Medicine: Hagopian A, Flaxman A, Takaro TK, Al Shatari SAE, Rajaratnam J, Becker S, et al (2012) Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation: Findings from a National Cluster Sample Survey
Summary
The human deaths become numbers in columns for epidemiologists to discover and statisticians to analyse. Accurate and timely mortality data serve as an important tool in population forecasting, as indicators of a population’s welfare, and for planning and developing health services and programmes and evaluating them [1,2,3]. In humanitarian crises (natural and man-made), such information serves a different purpose, mainly to evaluate the severity of the crisis, both at its onset and as it evolves over time [4]. The research article by Amy Hagopian and colleagues [5] in this week’s issue of PLOS Medicine, which provides the most recent excess mortality estimates for the 2003 Iraq invasion and subsequent occupation, is an example of the latter
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