Tag Archives: first_indochina_war

Epidemiology in wartime

What was the best paper in 2006? I am voting for a Lancet paper by Gilbert Burnham, Riyadh Lafta, Shannon Doocy and Les Roberts. Between May and July, 2006, they did a national cross-sectional cluster sample survey of mortality in Iraq. Data from 1849 households was gathered, 1474 births and 629 deaths were reported. As of July, 2006, there have been 654 965 excess Iraqi deaths occured as a consequence of the war.
If you can’t imagine what it means to work in war regions you may read the biography of Robert Capa (1913 –1954) who worked as a photographer in the many wars, and died in the First Indochina War. He did wonderful photos together with his girl-friend Gerda Taro, one of the first woman photographers who died by a tank accident already in the Spanish civil war at the age of 26. I will pay for the flowers if you visit her grave at Père Lachaise in Paris.

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Addendum

As expected, the study raised criticism: scienceblog:doi:10.1126/science.316.5823.355a