In the middle of an ongoing conflict, it's difficult — if not impossible — to understand the true human cost of war.

Casualties go uncounted and injuries untreated as fighting rages on, leaving an imperfect tally of lives lost or damaged. Indirect effects of conflict, from missed cancer treatments due to hospital bombings or disease outbreaks caused by poor sanitation and overcrowding in refugee camps, can take months or years to become apparent. 

The chaos of war usually means that researchers wait until a conflict is over to pore over the data and reconstruct as complete a picture as they can of how many lives were lost and what took them.