Famine

From WikiMD's Health & Wellness Encyclopedia


 – Famine is a highly technical term, to be used under very specific circumstances. Different definitions of famine exist as there are different classifications that are used to measure levels of food insecurity and that set cut-off limits for determining different phases of food security. These classifications typically use indicators such as anthropometrics and mortality. One example is the Famine Magnitude scale of Howe and Devereux which classifies the magnitude of famines: food secure, food insecure, food crisis, famine, severe famine, and extreme famine based on livelihood measures and measurements of mortality and child malnutrition to categorize a situation. Using this scale, famine conditions are defined as crude mortality rate >=1 but < 5/10,000/day, and/or Wasting > =20 per cent but < 40 per cent, and/or prevalence of oedema. Another example is the Integrated Food Security and Humanitarian Phase Classification (IPC) system, which classifies phases into generally food secure, moderately/borderline food insecure, acute food and livelihood crisis, humanitarian crisis and famine/human catastrophe. Here a famine/human catastrophe is classified by the key reference outcomes: crude mortality rate > 2/10,000/day; acute malnutrition > 30 per cent; disease pandemic; food access/availability extreme entitlement gap, much below 2,100 kilocalories per person per day; water access/availability. < 4 litres/person/day; destitution/displacement: large scale, concentrated; civil insecurity widespread: high intensity conflict; livelihood assets: effectively complete loss.

Resources

Latest articles - Famine

PubMed
Clinical trials
Up To Date
UpToDate
Medline
Medline plus
You Tube
YouTube videos
About
Apple bitten.svg

WikiMD is the world's largest, free medical and wellness encyclopedia edited only by professionals.


Wiki.png

Navigation: Wellness - Encyclopedia - Health topics - Disease Index‏‎ - Drugs - Rare diseases - Gray's Anatomy - USMLE - Hospitals

Ad: Tired of being Overweight? Try W8MD's insurance physician weight loss
Philadelphia medical weight loss & NYC medical weight loss.

WikiMD is not a substitute for professional medical advice. See full disclaimer.

Credits:Most images are courtesy of Wikimedia commons, and templates Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY SA or similar.

Contributors: Admin