Listen: Disrupted Lives, Delayed Care And A Revised Death Toll In Puerto Rico

June 4, 2018

Hundreds of shoes are displayed in front of the Puerto Rican Capitol in San Juan on June 1 in memory of those killed by Hurricane Maria. The storm, which pummeled the island in September 2017, is likely responsible for the deaths of more than 4,600 people, some 70 times more than official estimates, researchers said last month. (Ricardo Arduengo/AFP/Getty Images)

Kaiser Health News senior correspondent Sarah Varney, on assignment in Puerto Rico, spoke with Mina Kim, host of KQED Forum, on Friday — the first day of hurricane season. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine last week estimated that more than 4,600 people perished during and after the Sept. 20 storm. A third of the deaths were attributed to delayed medical care or no medical care at all, according to the study. Varney has seen firsthand how devastation wrought by the storm harmed citizens of the island, especially the sick and elderly.

This story was produced by Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

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