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Humanitarian context

As the surveillance and reporting of diseases and other health factors become increasingly difficult in humanitarian crisis situations, the methodologies used to report the data are compromised. One study found that less than half (42.4%) of nutrition surveys sampled from humanitarian contexts correctly calculated the prevalence of malnutrition and only one-third (35.3%) of the surveys met the criteria for quality. Among the mortality surveys, only 3.2% met the criteria for quality. As nutritional status and mortality rates help indicate the severity of a crisis, the tracking and reporting of these health factors is crucial.

Vital registries are usually the most effective ways to collect data, but in humanitarian contexts these registries can be non-existent, unreliable, or inaccessible. As such, mortality is often inaccurately measured using either prospective demographic surveillance or retrospective mortality surveys. Prospective demographic surveillance requires much manpower and is difficult to implement in a spread-out population. Retrospective mortality surveys are prone to selection and reporting biases. Other methods are being developed, but are not common practice yet.