Citation

Cairns KL, Woodruff BA, Myatt M, Bartlett L, Goldberg H, Roberts L. Disasters 2009; 33(4): 503-521.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1467-7717.2008.01085.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Since the rates and causes of mortality are critical indicators of the overall health of a population, it is important to evaluate mortality even where no complete vital statistics reporting exists. Such settings include humanitarian emergencies. Experience in cross‐sectional survey methods to assess retrospectively crude, age‐specific, and maternal mortality in stable settings has been gained over the past 40 years, and methods appropriate to humanitarian emergencies have been developed. In humanitarian emergencies, crude and age‐specific mortality can be gauged using methods based on the enumeration of individuals resident in randomly selected households—frequently referred to as a household census. Under‐five mortality can also be assessed through a modified prior birth history method in which a representative sample of reproductive‐aged women are questioned about dates of child births and deaths. Maternal mortality can be appraised via the initial identification of maternal deaths in the study population and a subsequent investigation to determine the cause of each death.