Dataset Information

The 2011 Famine in Somalia: lessons learnt from a failed response?

ABSTRACT:

Background

Famine early warning systems clearly identified the risk of famine in South Central Somalia in 2010-2011 but timely action to prevent the onset of famine was not taken. The result was large scale mortality, morbidity, and population displacement.

Discussion

The main factor that turned a drought-related food crisis into a famine was the war that afflicted southern Somalia and the tactics adopted by the various belligerents. These included non-state actors, regional, and international governments. In disasters and complex emergencies, such as this, we posit that five conditions need to be in place to enable humanitarian agencies to provide a timely response to early warnings of famine. These are: presence; access; adequate funding; operational capacity; and legal protection for humanitarian action. In the run up to the Somalia famine each of these presented severe challenges to humanitarian action. The design of the current coordination and funding system contributed to the problems of achieving a neutral, independent, and effective humanitarian response.

Summary

The 2011 famine in Somalia was predicted and could have been mitigated or prevented if the humanitarian response had been timely and more effective. To improve responsiveness to early warnings, action is required to better insulate the humanitarian system from political agendas. While overcoming constraints, such as lack of access, may sometimes be beyond the scope of humanitarian actors, more could be done to enhance the perceived neutrality of parts of the humanitarian system. This should include a reappraisal of the cluster coordination system and reforms to donor funding mechanisms.

SUBMITTER: Seal A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3829375 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The 2011 Famine in Somalia: lessons learnt from a failed response?

Seal Andrew A Bailey Rob R

Conflict and health 20131030 1

<h4>Background</h4>Famine early warning systems clearly identified the risk of famine in South Central Somalia in 2010-2011 but timely action to prevent the onset of famine was not taken. The result was large scale mortality, morbidity, and population displacement.<h4>Discussion</h4>The main factor that turned a drought-related food crisis into a famine was the war that afflicted southern Somalia and the tactics adopted by the various belligerents. These included non-state actors, regional, and ...[more]

PMID: 24171715

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Project description:Infectious disease forecasting is gaining traction in the public health community; however, limited systematic comparisons of model performance exist. Here we present the results of a synthetic forecasting challenge inspired by the West African Ebola crisis in 2014-2015 and involving 16 international academic teams and US government agencies, and compare the predictive performance of 8 independent modeling approaches. Challenge participants were invited to predict 140 epidemiological targets across 5 different time points of 4 synthetic Ebola outbreaks, each involving different levels of interventions and "fog of war" in outbreak data made available for predictions. Prediction targets included 1-4 week-ahead case incidences, outbreak size, peak timing, and several natural history parameters. With respect to weekly case incidence targets, ensemble predictions based on a Bayesian average of the 8 participating models outperformed any individual model and did substantially better than a null auto-regressive model. There was no relationship between model complexity and prediction accuracy; however, the top performing models for short-term weekly incidence were reactive models with few parameters, fitted to a short and recent part of the outbreak. Individual model outputs and ensemble predictions improved with data accuracy and availability; by the second time point, just before the peak of the epidemic, estimates of final size were within 20% of the target. The 4th challenge scenario - mirroring an uncontrolled Ebola outbreak with substantial data reporting noise - was poorly predicted by all modeling teams. Overall, this synthetic forecasting challenge provided a deep understanding of model performance under controlled data and epidemiological conditions. We recommend such "peace time" forecasting challenges as key elements to improve coordination and inspire collaboration between modeling groups ahead of the next pandemic threat, and to assess model forecasting accuracy for a variety of known and hypothetical pathogens.

Dataset Information

The 2011 Famine in Somalia: lessons learnt from a failed response?

Background

Discussion

Summary

Publications

The 2011 Famine in Somalia: lessons learnt from a failed response?

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