Via The Globe and Mail, a fascinating report by Stephanie Nolen on Dr. Prabhat Jha and the Million Death Study, which has been going on for over a decade: How counting the dead helps the living in India. Excerpt:
Using data from the first 250,000 deaths catalogued, Dr. Jha and colleagues showed that smoking was killing one million Indians each year, far more than commonly thought; the evidence prompted government to accelerate the use of warning labels on tobacco products even as the powerful industry lobby was trying to kill smoking-control legislation.
Next the study found that 100,000 people were dying of AIDS each year, only a quarter of what the United Nations was reporting for India – and this has led to a rethink on spending on HIV treatment, which is comparatively expensive. The study also found 50,000 snakebite deaths in India a year, which was the World Health Organization’s worldwide total.
The latest evidence concerns malaria: Dr. Jha says the verbal post-mortems show that far more adults are dying of malaria than the WHO estimates for India. Malaria is, of course, a curable illness, and the data suggest that the Indian government needs to make a new push to ensure treatment is available in the rural areas most affected.
“If you talk to clinicians in states like Orissa where malaria is common, it’s no surprise to them, but at the central government, it’s been a shock,” he said.
