Outdated mortality benchmarks risk missing early signs of famine and delay recognizing mass starvation

Recent global crises have exposed the limits of a universal mortality threshold for declaring famine—an approach that can obscure how famine actually unfolds across different populations. In a paper published in The Lancet, researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and colleagues call for a fundamental re-examination of how famine thresholds are defined.

source https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-outdated-mortality-benchmarks-early-famine.html