Post-Katrina New Orleans death rate shoots up

[IChing]

Source: reuters

By Ed Stoddard

DALLAS (Reuters) - Death rates in New Orleans rose nearly 50 percent as the city began its recovery from Hurricane Katrina, in part because of storm-related damage to its public health facilities, researchers said on Thursday.

"The city lost half of its public health workers after Katrina so that compromises your ability to recover. The number of city employees went from 6,000 to 3,000," Dr. Kevin Stephens, New Orleans Health Department director and the lead researcher, said in an interview. "It is also difficult for hospitals to reopen after they are closed. And a lot of doctors lost their medical records, offices and equipment in the flooding," Stephens said.

"The post-Katrina mortality rate for the first six months of 2006 was approximately 91.37 deaths per 100,000 ... Compared to the pre-Katrina population mortality rate of 62.17 deaths per 100,000 population, this represents an average 47 percent increase from the baseline mortality," the study said.

"It is suggested that a destroyed or poorly recovered public health infrastructure, which normally would be able to identify health problems and protect the health of a population, has in fact contributed to excess mortality," the researchers concluded.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN2139658520070621

[Nikki Stone1]

1. Those deaths are on Bush's head. NT

NT

[silverojo]

14. That won't faze him

He doesn't give a rat's ass about any of the deaths he's caused.

[Javaman]

15. A baseball bat to his* head wouldn't faze him*. he's* that dense. nt

[Middle finga]

2. A Shameful moment

New Orleans will go down as another shameful moment in this nation's history. It rank right next our treatment of the early native americans, slavery, Jim Crow, Nuking Japan, Vietnam and the Iraq invasion. Damn! The shameful moment list is getting pretty long.

[KamaAina]

6. Way'at! Welcome to DU!

:hi:

[rodeodance]

3. maybe they should stop building so many high end price condos and focus on the people??

[pitohui]

9. high end price condos? could you name ONE?

i'm curious, you seem to have us confused with honolulu or vegas or something! high end priced condos, that's the joke of the century

[KamaAina]

12. Here you go...

http://www.gulfsouthrealestate.interealty.com/PropSearch/PropertyDetail.asp?AgentID=&ML=591985&Print=1&IR=8

1301 North Rampart,
New Orleans Louisiana, 70116

Offered at
$1,600,000...

'The Barracks Suite' - Premiere location, unparalleled luxury. Experience the pleasure of success in this 2 bedroom, 2 bath penthouse to be constructed atop city's newest luxury complex. Spectacular views of the Quarter, pool, crtyrd, private gallery. Parking avail. Don't miss this chance to own a notable residence at edge of the Fr Qtr! Poolroom/ exercise rm. Ask about preconstruction price. Completion Date - Summer 2007.

In case you're wondering, I found the site while searching for potential housing on behalf of my adopted neighborhood organization. Even if I had that kind of dough, and were to return to the city APA (Against Pito's Advice :-) ), it surely wouldn't be to something like that -- in an area that's kind of marginal, to boot!

i'm curious, you seem to have us confused with honolulu or vegas or something!

Actually, there are parallels with each: in our case, decades of history before joining the U.S., not to mention lousy schools, low-paid cops, etc. (I even did a humor piece on this) and for Vegas, a certain lack of inhibition. :-)

[pitohui]

17. there isn't a remote parallel

go to waikiki and look at the endless high rises full of shiny happy people

then go to new orleans and tell me there is something similar, there just isn't, it's truly sad and pathetic

these units that are "gonna" be completed some day, pie in the sky, they won't be, a lot of them it's complete and total horse hockey if you ask me -- trump talks the big talk but the towers are not here in new orleans

why would ANYONE want to deny us a better future? beautiful safe, clean, new high rises would be terrific -- but they aren't going to happen, not really, not in any real numbers

i'm tired of people who want us in slums forever, real tired of it, equally tired of those who play on hope and hold out fantasies of gleaming new towers that turn out to be total self promotion and horse shit

[KamaAina]

23. Next time I go, I'll be sure to bring an R.E.M. tape with me!

go to waikiki and look at the endless high rises full of shiny happy people :-)

N.O. was wise indeed not to let the Quarter go that route. Now, however, we see stuff like this around its fringes: another is right on Frenchmen and Chartres, right in the middle of the city's (and thus, the planet's) coolest neighborhood. :puke:

There is a wide and substantial gulf between "slums forever" and Trump Tower and its ilk (the one in Waikiki is actually getting built :eyes: ). The resources that went into building a $1.6M condo on a rather scary block could have been used to fix up half a block's worth of good, old-fashioned doubles in, say, Mid-City.

[Scout1071]

24. Actually, wasn't that the B-52's?

[KamaAina]

26. You get partial credit for that

it was indeed Kate Pierson doing the vocal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.E.M._%28band%29#At_the_height_of_fame

The band also scored a Top 10 hit with "Shiny Happy People," one of three songs on the album to feature vocals from Kate Pierson of fellow Athens band The B-52's.

That means you're still alive for the grand prize, an all-expense-paid trip to Athens (GA, not Greece). :-)

[ariesgem]

13. Luxury High-Rise Condos are in the planning stages ......

Lured by congressionally authorized tax credits and other financial incentives after Hurricane Katrina, a procession of developers announced plans to build high-rises in New Orleans.

But 20 months after the storm, most have fallen by the wayside. The slow pace of the recovery gets much of the blame. New Orleans still has no comprehensive rebuilding blueprint, and funding is falling far short of planners' expectations.

Adding to the tension for commercial investors: Construction and insurance costs have soared.

"There have been a lot of announcements, but you don't see a lot of cranes, do you?'' said Michael Siegel, executive vice president of Corporate Realty Inc., a New Orleans-based brokerage. "I think we all underestimated how long this (the recovery) was going to take.''

At least one big plan - a $400 million proposal by Donald Trump to construct the city's tallest building - is going ahead, although the only visible sign at the planned site of the Trump International Hotel & Tower is the tycoon's name painted on a brick-wall mural. Every weekday morning, cars fill the parking lot where the 70-story building is to be built.

snip............

The Trump project is one of eight new luxury condo complexes, totaling more than 8,000 units, approved by the city planning commission since Katrina. At least one of those projects, Vantage Tower, has fallen apart.

http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/southcentral/2007/06/01/80285.htm

[pitohui]

16. i live here, and these plans are bogus

trump has been boasting practically since the storm hit that he would go ahead w. a $200 million condo project planned before the storm

he's done about as much work on it as he's done on the "freedom tower" which he also boasted of building

most of these "plans" are designed to separate a fool and his money and will never be built

there is not the wealth or the population to support any high rise condos, it would be nice if we did have something like this, instead of the endless slums that a lot of people wish on it forever, but the reality is otherwise

[Xenotime]

28. I have a friend who flys out to New Orleans to buy land...

every other week. Something big is in the works.

[Solly Mack]

4. criminal

[kestrel91316]

5. Public health is a waste of money. Why steal hard-earned $$$ from the

leisure class????

Those people were just useless eaters anyway - probably welfare cheats, too.

:sarcasm:

Now can I cry? :cry:

[progressive_realist]

7. How can this be?

We've been told over and over that big government is the root of all problems. So with half as many city workers, shouldn't the mortality rate have gone down, not up, fifty percent?

:sarcasm:

[pitohui]

10. i know you are being sarcastic, we used to have a first rate public health system

the charity hospital system was completely destroyed by katrina, i mean COMPLETELY, buildings, infrastructure, everything

there is nothing here for anybody who wants anything done other than botox, it's damn scary

[pitohui]

8. what was their first clue?

if you can get a doctor, there's a helluva wait and then it's like two minutes and he/she deals w. your problem and then vanishes and you are never really sure that the problem is dealt with and then later you get a call saying, oh wait, there might be a real problem, come back for more tests, and then you try to schedule the more tests, and urgh, it just goes on and on...

and i actually have insurance for a change! god help the uninsured, i have no clue what they do

if you are not in the prime of life in terrific health you'd be an idiot to come back to new orleans, seriously, stay away, you don't know when you're well off, i wish we could get out of here

[RB TexLa]

11. It's Louisiana. We are a violent culture.

We murder one another, it's what we do.

[EFerrari]

19. Haven't you lost health care professionals in droves since Katrina?

The death rate is up 47%!

[pitohui]

21. yes you have to wait endlessly to get care even if you are insured

don't have an emergency is my suggestion, i've had to schedule some appointments many weeks in advance and even then i get at best 5 minutes w. an actual doctor

and i'm insured!

some doctors are quitting altogether rather than seeing un-insured patients, because they lose money on the patient yet have the same risk of being sued if anything goes wrong (probably a greater risk because people who are more financially desperate are more willing to "stretch" the facts to file a lawsuit and one thing we got no shortage of in new orleans is law schools and lawyers)

it is a nightmare

my own health is failing and i'm really starting to get scared, i don't want to be a statistic

[EFerrari]

22. Maybe we should petition Chavez or Castro -- I don't want to be one

either. :(

[pitohui]

20. i haven't murdered anyone lately

but actually i'm glad that some of the locals are getting up on their hind legs and firing back at some of the carjackers and the bar invaders and the rest of the criminal element

the police arrest but the courts won't prosecute, so what other alternative do the people have?

did you see the story last week about the teen who shot the carjacker that grabbed his mom? turns out the carjacker has a warrant out against him for murder! he probably saved his mom's life -- this was in metairie, used to be a no go zone for carjackers, no more

[Doctor_J]

18. If Smirky's feeling down about his Nixonesque approval rating,

he can pour himself a big scotch and sit back and think of all the dead Democrats in NOLA. Nothing brings a smile to his face like death.

[Speaker]

25. The "something important" that is missing from this study...

are the causes of the mortality.

Counting obits is pretty useles for establishing cause and effect.

Obits are often posted in a person's home town, even when that person died a thousand miles away in their state of residence.

[Xenotime]

27. What a horrible scar on this "Land of opportunity".. whatever.