The number of violent deaths derived from the household survey, plus the adjustments for missing clusters and reporting bias, was estimated to be 151,000 (95% uncertainty range, 104,000 to 223,000) from March 2003 through June 2006.
The results were also compared to the 2006 survey by Burnham et al. reported in the Lancet, and to the Iraq Body Count project (IBC).
[7] The NEJM article on the survey states that both the IFHS and the IBC "indicate that the 2006 study by Burnham et al. considerably overestimated the number of violent deaths.
This level of underreporting is highly improbable, given the internal and external consistency of the data and the much larger sample size and quality-control measures taken in the implementation of the IFHS."
[10] The authors commend the IFHS study group for its attempt to capture the highest-quality results, but also discuss "substantial limitations" of the IFHS and more generally of the use of household surveys to estimate mortality in circumstances such as Iraq, saying: The sampling frame was based on a 2004 count, but the population has been changing rapidly and dramatically because of sectarian violence, the flight of refugees, and overall population migration.
The circumstances that are required to produce high-quality public health statistics contrast starkly with those under which the IFHS study group worked.
[12] On the other hand, Jalil Hadi al-Shimmari, who oversees the western Baghdad health department, said the 151,000 total seems roughly accurate but is probably a "modest" one and that "the real number might be bigger than this.
Some of these criticisms relate to an idea that respondents would have a fear of giving information about violence-related deaths to government interviewers who represented "one side of the conflict" and the reliance on Iraq Body Count's data in dangerous areas (Anbar and Nineveh provinces and parts of Baghdad).
[13] In a January 11, 2008 article Les Roberts, co-author of the Lancet study, is quoted as saying: They roughly found a steady rate of violence from 2003 to 2006.
If the same trends continued, that total today would be more than 600,000.... Interviewers identified themselves as employees of the Ministry of Health, then under the control of Shiite cleric Moktada al Sadr.
Road accidents were ten times their pre-war totals-if someone is run off a highway by a U.S. convoy, is that a "nonviolent" death?
[19][20]John Tirman wrote on (February 14, 2008) in Editor and Publisher: Yet another, a much larger house-to-house survey was conducted by the Iraq Ministry of Health (MoH).
The logical explanation for this discrepancy is that people responding to interviewers from the government, and a ministry controlled by Moktada al Sadr, would not want to admit that their loved one died by violence.
[21]Timothy R. Gulden, Ph.D., of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy in College Park, asserted that the Iraq Family Health Survey authors "acknowledge and attempt to correct for underreporting of deaths from nonviolent causes, but they make no allowance for the more serious underreporting of violence-related deaths to government-affiliated survey takers.
The previous Iraqi health minister, Ali al-Shemari, in early November 2006 estimated between 100,000 and 150,000 people had been killed since the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
[22][23][24][25] The Taipei Times reported on his methodology: "Al-Shemari said on Thursday [Nov. 9, 2006] that he based his figure on an estimate of 100 bodies per day brought to morgues and hospitals -- though such a calculation would come out closer to 130,000 in total.
"[22] The Washington Post reported: "As al-Shemari issued the startling new estimate, the head of the Baghdad central morgue said Thursday he was receiving as many as 60 violent death victims each day at his facility alone.
Dr. Abdul-Razzaq al-Obaidi said those deaths did not include victims of violence whose bodies were taken to the city's many hospital morgues or those who were removed from attack scenes by relatives and quickly buried according to Muslim custom.
"[25] From a November 9, 2006 International Herald Tribune article:[23] "Each day we lost 100 persons, that means per month 3,000, per year it's 36,000, plus or minus 10 percent," al-Shemari said.
From the November 11, 2006 Taipei Times article:[22] An official with the ministry also confirmed the figure yesterday [Nov. 10, 2006], but later said that the estimated deaths ranged between 100,000 and 150,000.