With limited ability to verify the extent of widespread reports of malnutrition and death emerging as the 2021-22 drought emergency in Somalia unfolded, in July 2022, with funding from the UK Government and USAID, the BRCiS Consortium supported Evidence for Change (e4c) in rolling out the Nutrition and Mortality Monitoring System (NMS), a health and nutrition sentinel site surveillance system.
Based on long-standing good practices in public health and humanitarian response, the NMS works with an established network of community health workers to conduct periodic household visits and collect data in a limited number of purposively selected sentinel sites. Compared to other nutrition and mortality data sources which are conducted less frequently, the NMS can provide ongoing, near-real-time updates on evolving crises, detect and describe current and emerging threats to health and nutrition, and determine the coverage and adequacy of a humanitarian response.