The residents of Aberfan experienced medical problems after the disaster. Many survivors reported suffering from "sleeping difficulties, nervousness, lack of friends, unwillingness to go to school and enuresis". In the year following the tip slide, close relatives of the victims had a death rate seven times higher than the norm. One local doctor later wrote "By every statistic, patients seen, prescriptions written, deaths, I can prove that this is a village of excessive sickness." Despite these problems, during the five years after the disaster the birth rate rose considerably, in marked contrast to that of Merthyr Tydfil.