Harvesting knowledge from insecure settings : the case of nutrition in Ethiopia

This thesis delves into the issue of availability and creation of knowledge in complex emergencies. We discuss health and nutrition data quality, accessibility and use for operational, policy and scientific purposes. Understanding the impact of conflict on populations’ health is essential for humanitarian interventions to effectively respond. Yet, collecting data to generate sound evidence is arduous due to limited access and insecurity. Meanwhile, Non-Governmental Organisations providing humanitarian aid have greater access to populations and collect data to monitor programmes. We investigate how programme data can be exploited by applying scientific methods. We focused on small-scale mortality and nutrition surveys, extensively used to collect representative data on emergency-affected communities. Small-scale surveys proved to be an important source of health and nutrition information. Their aggregated analysis elucidates trends and associations of health variables. Specifically, the case study on undernutrition in Ethiopia provides estimates of wasting prevalence, identifies factors explaining its variation and can guide survey planning towards areas with limited data availability.