Mortality above what would be expected based on the non-crisis mortality rate in the
population of interest. Excess mortality is thus mortality that is attributable to the crisis
conditions, the common use of EM in diseases trend analisys as the seasonal ones. It
can be expressed as a rate (the difference between observed and non-crisis mortality
rates), or as a total number of excess deaths.(1)
(1) Checchi and Roberts, Interpreting and using mortality data in humanitarian
emergencies, ODI/HPN paper 52, 2005.