Under any other administration, there would have been impeachment for the level of incompetency surrounding this event on USA soil. Bush and Cheney is responsible for the deaths that occurred as a result of Katrina.
Deaths from Katrina continue, medical officials say (click here)
People dying of suicide, hopelessness, stress are linked to storm, they say
NEW ORLEANS
The bodies are no longer being dragged from houses and buildings toppled by Hurricane Katrina, but nearly two years later, many in the medical community think that the storm is still killing.
Storm survivors are dying from the effects of both psychological and physical stress, from the dust and mold still in dwellings to financial problems to fear of crime, health experts and officials say.
“There is no doubt in my mind that Katrina is still killing our residents,” Dr. Frank Minyard, the Orleans Parish coroner, said this week.
He gave examples: “People with pre-existing conditions that are made worse by the stress of living here after the storm. Old people who are just giving up. People who are killing themselves because they feel they can’t go on.”
Some say that an in-depth federal analysis is needed, despite a new state report that found no significant increase in deaths in the New Orleans area from January 2006 through June 2006. The state Department of Health and Hospitals is still compiling figures for the last six months of 2006.
Dr. Raoult Ratard, the state epidemiologist, said that “the only slight increase” in deaths was in the first three months of 2006 in Orleans Parish.
But New Orleans medical officials say that jump, from 11.3 per 1,000 deaths to 14.3 per 1,000, — a leap of more than 25 percent — was anything but slight. Moreover, the report doesn’t take into account evacuees who died while away from the city and were returned for burial.
“Our death rate was already high. That’s huge,” said Dr. Kevin Stephens Sr., the director of the New Orleans Health Department.
Some New Orleans doctors questioned the accuracy of the population figures used to determine the death rate, suggesting that they might have been too high. Dr. Fred Cerise, the DHH secretary, said he is comfortable with the population data, which he said came from the Census Bureau and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The official death toll in New Orleans stands at about 1,100. State health officials said that since the end of 2005, deaths have not been listed as Katrina-related except for bodies found under storm wreckage. But Minyard said he believes that the hurricane is still behind many deaths.
Local mental-health professionals say they are encountering more people with psychological problems.
“We’re seeing triple the number of people with mental-health problems as we were before Katrina,” said Leah Hedrick, a social worker at Ochsner Hospital. “Depression, suicidal, anxiety, abuse of drugs and alcohol — and along with that comes a lot more physical problems.”
Another possible sign that there are more deaths are paid death notices in The Times-Picayune. Before Katrina, the newspaper usually printed about a page daily. Now, three and four pages are not uncommon.
Stephens analyzed the death-notice pattern before and after the storm and said he believes that it confirms that more local people are dying.
His study will be published this month in the Journal of Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, the American Medical Association’s new publication on disaster management.
Minyard believes that the medical community’s different observations reach the same conclusion, and one day will be proved correct.
“Years from now, when they talk about post-traumatic stress, New Orleans after Katrina will be the poster child,” he said.
