New Orleans' Mortality Rate 47% Higher After Hurricane Katrina, Study Finds

The mortality rate among people who lived in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina made landfall in August 2005 increased by 47% during the first six months of 2006 compared with the rate in the years before the hurricane, according to a study recently published in the journal Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, USA Today reports. To measure the combined mortality rate of people who returned to New Orleans after the hurricane and those who remained in other cities, researchers at the New Orleans Health Department compared the number of death notices published each month in the New Orleans Times-Picayune during the first six months of 2006 to the number published each month in 2002 and 2004.

According to the study, 1,317 death notices on average were published per month from January 2006 to June 2006, compared with an average of 924 death notices per month in 2002 and 2004. The figures indicate that the death rate has risen to 91 per 100,000 people since the storm from 62 per 100,000 people, according to the study.

Kevin Stephens, director of the city's health department and lead author of the study, said, "We're facing a lot of health care challenges. I'm sure that has a significant impact on mortality." Stephens added that people who no longer live in New Orleans often have trouble obtaining health care in their current locations. Jullette Saussy, director of New Orleans EMS, said, "The lack of primary care, of mental health care and of long waits in emergency rooms all have (worsened) people's normally controllable chronic diseases."

A separate study published in the same journal finds that more than 4,486 doctors from three parishes in the New Orleans area have been displaced, creating a shortage that continues to be a problem at many hospitals. The second study was led by Kusuma Madamala of the American Medical Association (Sternberg, USA Today, 6/22).

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