Researchers say three times as many people have been killed in warsover the past 50 years than has been officially acknowledged. Theconclusion is based on a new way to count the war dead by surveyingtheir survivors. VOA's Jessica Berman reports.

According to thenew survey method, the researchers estimate that 5.4 million deathsoccurred in wars between 1955 and 2002 in the 13 countries studied,which is three times more than previously estimated. The researcherssay the Vietnam war alone claimed 3.8 million lives.

Ziad Obermeyer

Ziad Obermeyer is a physician with Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.

"Ifyou look across all countries that we looked at and across all years,the media number was about a third of what we found from all thosenumbers," said Ziad Obermeyer.

Obermeyer and colleagues havedeveloped a way of counting the dead that is different traditionalmethods of basing the numbers largely on eye witnesses and mediaaccounts. Those figures, the researchers say, are open to criticismfor bias and inaccuracy.

Obermeyer says the model incorporates peacetime data gathered after the war has ended.  

That information comes from the United Nation's World Health Surveys of families who have lost loved ones.

Obermeyersays incorporating peacetime data into official death estimatescorrects undercounts and political biases that may exist in wars.

He says the model provides a more accurate historical record of the casualties of war.

"Thosekinds of numbers are important for the military," he said. "They'reimportant for politicians and they are important for the public thatneeds to know what the consequences of war are."
 

Obermeyersays it's important to have an official record because it contradictsthe view that the number of civilian and combatant deaths is decliningdue to strategic and technological innovations.

The study on war deaths is published in the British Medical Journal.