Users ' guides to the medical literature : how to use an article about mortality in a humanitarian emergency Edward

The accurate interpretation of mortality surveys in humanitarian crises is useful for both public health responses and security responses. Recent examples suggest that few medical personnel and researchers can accurately interpret the validity of a mortality survey in these settings. Using an example of a mortality survey from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), we demonstrate important methodological considerations that readers should keep in mind when reading a mortality survey to determine the validity of the study and the applicability of the findings to their settings. Public health scenario You are a physician working for an international humanitarian medical organization as head of mission. You have recently arrived in the North Kivu province in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and are conducting a health assessment of the region to inform your medical response intervention. Media reports suggest that mortality from violence are extremely high in this area of the country, but a more accurate assessment of mortality – both directly and indirectly related to violence – will assist you in setting priorities and may mandate a call for additional medical specialists. Political agendas may distort media reports of violence and death and the quality of the evidence on which the reports rely may be low. Further, media reports are likely to omit deaths from malnutrition and infection, often the most common causes of mortality in protracted violent Published: 30 September 2008 Conflict and Health 2008, 2:9 doi:10.1186/1752-1505-2-9 Received: 19 August 2008 Accepted: 30 September 2008 This article is available from: http://www.conflictandhealth.com/content/2/1/9 © 2008 Mills et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.