JOINT INFORMATION CENTER

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 13, 2008

Department of Health and Hospitals News Update

Louisiana Chief Medical Officer Continues to Update Number of Gustav Fatalities

BATON ROUGE -- Please find the attached memo sent from Louisiana Chief Medical Officer Louis Cataldie, M.D., regarding fatalities related to Hurricane Gustav:

From: Louis Cataldie, M.D.
To: Secretary Alan Levine
Date: September 13, 2008
Re: Fatalities Related to Hurricane Gustav

This memorandum delineates the current number of confirmed hurricane-related fatalities. As Chief Medical Officer for the state of Louisiana, I am working closely with local coroners and police departments to identify fatalities as a result of Hurricane Gustav and offering assistance to local authorities.
Today, there are no newly-confirmed deaths related to Hurricane Gustav. The total stands at the 43 deaths confirmed yesterday.

Any death that is determined by the jurisdictional coroner to have been caused as a result of Hurricane Gustav will be counted as a storm-related death. General criteria for classifying a death as hurricane-related include:

- Death due to activities associated with evacuation (i.e., evacuation stress precipitates a heart attack)
- Death due to the effects of the storm itself (i.e., a tree falls on a person during the storm)
- Death associated with recovery efforts (i.e., a person is electrocuted by a fallen electrical line while cleaning up fallen tree limbs)

I will continue to notify you at the end of each day of newly-confirmed deaths related to Hurricane Gustav.

For the latest information on Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, you can visit emergency.louisiana.gov or call the state's emergency hotline at 1-866-288-2484 to listen to a recorded message with the most up-to-date information.

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