GIS for Health (6)
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Greeting from Cape Town,
at the 18th African Health Science Conference currently taking place in
Cape Town Dr. David le Sueur from the Malaria Research Programme of the
Medical Research Council South Africa, presented a paper on
"Geographic Information Systems in Health - an African Perspective"
The abstract reads:
GIS is a relatively new tool in the Health field and many remain sceptical
of its applicability. The reasons for this are related to what is largely a
"Northern" perspective. This perspective has its origins in its use as a
spatial management tool and limited application to diseases with clear
environmental links. Africa is, however, unique in terms of its disease
burden and profile. Within Africa 71.3% of the burden of disease is
attributed to Infectious Diseases with Malaria being the single greatest
contributor (10.8%). The relevance of GIS as a research and intervention
tool in relation to Infectious Diseases and especially the Vector Born
Diseases (Malaria, Schistosomiasis) is more easily argued.
One of the greatest factors affecting GIS is the cost associated with
obtaining baseline data, which have previously limited its application
within a developing country context. However a number of recent
developments have altered this situation:
- The availability of numerous continental data sets
- The "Democratisation" of spatial positioning with the advent of the
Navstar Global Positioning System (GPS)
- Increase in continental Internet connectivity.
Health GIS in Africa is in its infancy and we have only just begun to
explore its potential. However its status as an "in vogue technology" has
both negative and positive impacts. The positive aspects are the rapid
development of new and useful tools. The negative relate to the tendency of
every study trying to see how it can fit in a GIS component. This approach
results in the use of GIS in many situations where it is not applicable.
One of the most important factors which should guide the use of GIS as a
study research tool is that of a clear need.
The remainder of the presentation uses the activities of the National
Malaria Research Programme to outline the evolutionary development of its
GIS initiative. GIS is a tool with strong links to the information age and
its value as a research, intervention and control tool in Health within
Africa remains largely unexplored.
[end of quote]
For those interested in details a World Wide Web page with more information
is accessible under:
or the Web page of the 'Mapping Malaria Risk in Africa' (MARA) project:
A booklet on vector based GIS and malaria in Africa "Toward a Spatial Rural
Information Systems" (46 pages) is presently only available as a hard copy
from
Dr. David le Sueur
mailto:le_sueur@med.und.ac.za
but will be placed on the internet as a '.pdf' file (readable with Adobe
Acrobat Reader) within the next two weeks.
Regards,
Dieter Neuvians
mailto:neuvians@harare.iafrica.com
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