Increased humanitarian deaths may not mean higher risks of dying

EDITOR—Sheik et al fill an important gap in the literature on humanitarian assistance, where firm statistics are often unavailable.1 Their findings support the general opinion that more deaths have been occurring among humanitarian relief workers and that intentional violence has become an important cause of death.2 As the authors point out, however, the absence of denominators representing the populations at risk makes it difficult to determine if the actual …