KHN 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.
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