Adhikari Kaustubh, Islam Nazmul, Jalal Mohammad Mahbubur Rahman
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom.
Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2025 Apr 4;20(4):e0320760. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0320760. eCollection 2025.
Bangladesh achieved its independence in 1971 through a violent liberation war. To avoid persecution by the Pakistani army, 9.9 million Bangladeshi refugees escaped to India. Medicine and food supplies to these camps were not adequate to meet the necessities of such a large population of refugees. Therefore, poor condition of these camps resulted in a higher death rate among the refugees than the peacetime death rate of Bangladeshis. This paper reviews reported death tolls in several refugee camps in India as published in newspapers and peer-reviewed journals. Extrapolating these figures, we estimate the total death toll among the refugees in 1971. We also estimate the overall 'excess death toll', the difference between the actual death toll and the expected natural death toll among these refugees, to be approximately 562,915 deaths. The confidence interval for the estimated excess death toll among the refugees is (323,562, 802,268) deaths.
孟加拉国于1971年通过一场激烈的解放战争实现了独立。为躲避巴基斯坦军队的迫害，990万孟加拉国难民逃到了印度。这些难民营的药品和食品供应不足以满足如此大量难民的生活必需品需求。因此，这些难民营的恶劣条件导致难民中的死亡率高于孟加拉国人的和平时期死亡率。本文回顾了报纸和同行评审期刊上公布的印度几个难民营的报告死亡人数。通过推断这些数字，我们估算了1971年难民中的总死亡人数。我们还估算了总体“超额死亡人数”，即这些难民的实际死亡人数与预期自然死亡人数之间的差值，约为562,915人死亡。难民中估计的超额死亡人数的置信区间为（323,562，802,268）人死亡。
