Editorial: The fate of information in the disaster zone

In a disaster accurate information, like clean water, is an indisputable good. The kind of information sought by outside agencies is, however, seldom available. The nature of contemporary disasters in Africa, linked as they generally are to civil conflict and political and administrative crises, militates against the rapid collection of, for example, nutritional and demographic data. By the same token, reliable base-line statistics that predate the crisis are seldom available. Parties to conflict may attempt to manipulate information about the populations under their control; and relief agencies, in the rush for funding, may promulgate statistics that owe more to guesswork and imagination than to research. News media tend to repeat and simplify these interpretations. Moreover, in a disaster, published information flows outwards; the last people to have access to it are the victims themselves.