Health response to the earthquake in Haiti, January 2010

Health response to the earthquake in Haiti January 2010It was not until the publication of several studies carried out months after the impactthat the official process of reporting mortality figures was thrown into controversy, questioningits integrity and credibility. A survey by the University of Michigan and later astudy commissioned by USAID/Haiti suggested lower but statistically more credibleestimates of the number killed: 149,095 (University of Michigan) 21 or 65,575 (USAIDstudy) (see Box). It is unclear whether and when the relief authorities were informed ofthe results of this survey published only nine months after the impact. The Governmentof Haiti unexpectedly raised further the official figure to over 300,000 when commemoratingthe first anniversary of the earthquake, almost five times the lowest scientific estimate(see Table 3.2). Despite the methodological differences of the two studies, theyoffer significantly lower figures than those officially issued by national authorities.Haitian fatalities: two surveys dispute official tollsUSAID studyThe death toll was determined based on two sources of information: 1) The color-codedbuilding assessment carried out by Haiti’s Ministry of Public Works, Transport, Communication(MTPTC) through an international entity 22 and 2) the Building Assessments and RubbleRemoval (BARR) survey in which people were asked how many of the residents in each of thehouses assessed died, among other questions. The group calculated the deaths per residenceby using average occupancy per house (5.2) and average death rate by yellow, green, and redhouses. The study concludes that the number of people killed in the earthquake was 65,575(the range of the estimate at p < .01 is 46,190 to 84,961 dead) (Schwartz, Pierre, Calpas 2011).University of Michigan studyThe mortality rate is established comparing two surveys: 1) a 2009 survey (pre-earthquake) carriedout by the University of Michigan, sampling 1,800 households in the Port-au-Prince area;and 2) a post-earthquake survey conducted in 2010, in which 1,732 (93.1%) of the 2009 sampledhousehold members were located. Using population estimates for the greater area of Port-Au-Prince of 2,713,599 and an average of 5.7 persons per household, they calculated 158,679 deaths:111,794 died during or immediately after the earthquake, 37,301 died as result of the injuries,and 9,583 died of an illness in a period of six weeks following the impact (Kolbe et al. 2010).Table 3.2 Mortality estimates for Haiti earthquakeSourceNumber killedGovernment (2010) 222,570Government (Jan 2011) 300,000Univ. of Michigan study 149,095USAID study 65,575It is important to note that the absence of data disaggregated by age and gender inofficial statistics had some impact on both the understanding of the quake and its effects,as well as on programming the relief efforts in Haiti. 232221 This figure does not include the estimated number of deaths from illness unrelated to the earthquake.22 Miyamota International trained 270 Haitian engineers in building assessment techniques, using a color-coded system:Green = safe; Yellow = inhabit after repairs; and Red = unsafe for occupancy. From February 2010 to January 2011 theteam evaluated 382,256 Port-au-Prince buildings with the following results: 205,539 green (54%), 99,043 yellow (26%),and 77,674 red (20%). This initiative was endorsed by the Ministry of Public Works, Transport, and Communication, UNOffice for Project Services (UNOPS) and the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF).23 Very partial data in Indonesia suggest that mortality among women resulting from the tsunami was significantly higher insome fishing villages.