TY - JOUR
T1 - A novel method for verifying war mortality while estimating Iraqi deaths for the Iran-Iraq war through operation desert storm (1980-1993)
AU - Li, Shang Ju
AU - Flaxman, Abraham
AU - Lafta, Riyadh
AU - Galway, Lindsay
AU - Takaro, Tim K.
AU - Burnham, Gilbert
AU - Hagopian, Amy
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Li et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2016/10
Y1 - 2016/10
N2 - Objectives: We estimated war-related Iraqi mortality for the period 1980 through 1993. Method To test our hypothesis that deaths reported by siblings (even dating back several decades) would correspond with war events, we compared sibling mortality reports with the frequency of independent news reports about violent historic events. We used data from a survey of 4,287 adults in 2000 Iraqi households conducted in 2011. Interviewees reported on the status of their 24,759 siblings. Death rates were applied to population estimates, 1980 to 1993. News report data came from the ProQuest New York Times database. Results: About half of sibling-reported deaths across the study period were attributed to direct warrelated injuries. The Iran-Iraq war led to nearly 200,000 adult deaths, and the 1990±1991 First Gulf War generated another approximately 40,000 deaths. Deaths during peace intervals before and after each war were significantly lower. We found a relationship between total sibling-reported deaths and the tally of war events across the period, p = 0.02. Conclusions: We report a novel method to verify the reliability of epidemiological (household survey) estimates of direct war-related injury mortality dating back several decades.
AB - Objectives: We estimated war-related Iraqi mortality for the period 1980 through 1993. Method To test our hypothesis that deaths reported by siblings (even dating back several decades) would correspond with war events, we compared sibling mortality reports with the frequency of independent news reports about violent historic events. We used data from a survey of 4,287 adults in 2000 Iraqi households conducted in 2011. Interviewees reported on the status of their 24,759 siblings. Death rates were applied to population estimates, 1980 to 1993. News report data came from the ProQuest New York Times database. Results: About half of sibling-reported deaths across the study period were attributed to direct warrelated injuries. The Iran-Iraq war led to nearly 200,000 adult deaths, and the 1990±1991 First Gulf War generated another approximately 40,000 deaths. Deaths during peace intervals before and after each war were significantly lower. We found a relationship between total sibling-reported deaths and the tally of war events across the period, p = 0.02. Conclusions: We report a novel method to verify the reliability of epidemiological (household survey) estimates of direct war-related injury mortality dating back several decades.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0164709
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0164709
M3 - Article
C2 - 27768730
AN - SCOPUS:84992390383
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 11
JO - PLoS One
JF - PLoS One
IS - 10
M1 - e0164709
ER -