The currently accepted means of categorizing household food insecurity and identifying famine or famine risk is the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) tool. Recent IPC analyses in countries at risk of famine have had difficulty correctly classifying households in Phase 5:“catastrophe”or famine conditions. The Household Hunger Scale (HHS) is the only means of differentiating households in Phase 5 from Phase 4 (“emergency”). However, its ability to accurately distinguish between these phases has never been field tested. That was the purpose of this study.
