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GIS in health
Some resources related to GIS in Health
Anyone
interested in the geography of disease will need a good understanding of the
basics of epidemiology, or at least of health statistics. The World Health
Organization website (www.who.int) is a good place to start. The WHO collects
mortality and morbidity data from member countries, allowing international and
inter-regional comparisons of health and disease. They publish the annual World
Health Report, the Weekly Epidemiological Record, WHO Statistical Information
System (WHOSIS), and a wealth of other useful publications. The Noncommunicable
Disease Division of WHO describes the global epidemiology of diseases such as
cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.
Data on the global epidemiology of
cancer can be found at CANCERmondial, (www.dep.iarc.fr/dephome.htm) a website of
the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).
After the
eradication of smallpox, poliomyelitis is slated for eradication. As of end of
1999, only 33 countries including India continue to have cases of Polio being
reported. In studying the surveillance of Polio, it is important to determine,
which type of polio is occurring in which parts of the world as these have
important implications for the disease eradication strategy employed. The map (fig. 4) produced by WHO, thus has
very important application. Further, in each of the countries, specific
geographic areas are identified for concerted action and additional rounds of
polio drops to the children below 5 years. Thus in addition to the NIDs for
eradicating polio from India, which is carried out throughout the country, the
states of Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal require special focus and
additional attention. These interpretations become possible when GIS is used
effectively.
In recent years, there has been a great deal of research on the geography of
AIDS diffusion, particularly in the United States.
The AIDS Data
Animation Project is a project of the Consortium of Earth Sciences Information
Network (CIESIN). The still frames and animations illustrated at this web site
document US disease trends for the years 1981 to 1993 using mortality data from
the US National Centers for Health Statistics. The US Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) provide a wealth of information for public health
professionals, including this series of slides on the epidemiology of AIDS. For
a dramatic illustration of the impact of the AIDS pandemic worldwide, visit the
UNAIDS AIDS Clock.
EpiMap - No treatise on GIS in Health is
complete without a description of EpiMap.
EpiMap is a programme for IBM
compatible microcomputers that displays data using geographic or other maps.
Data values may be entered from the keyboard or supplied in Epi Info or dBASE
files. The data may be counts, rates or other numeric values. In colour or
patterns maps, the values are represented as shading or colour patterns for each
geographic entity. In Dot density maps, randomly placed dots proportional in
number to the values are placed in each entity. Epi Map also produces
cartograms, in which the value for each geographic entity is allowed to control
the size of the entity. Available in the public domain, it is freely available
for researchers, practitioners from CDC, Atlanta, now for over 10 years. Outline
maps are supplied with the software. It is designed to work both independently
or as a companion to Epi Info.
HealthMap - It is a joint
WHO/UNICEF programme based within the Department of Communicable Diseases of
WHO. Created in 1993, to establish a GIS to support management and monitoring of
the Guineaworm Eradication programme, it has been expanded to a much wider range
of public health applications and now includes the promotion and use of GIS for
other disease control programmes and in public health departments of a number of
countries. Some of the specific applications of HealthMap include the Programme
on Onchocerciasis in Africa, Surveillance and screening for African
trypanosomiasis, Severe trachoma in Morocco, Mali and Gambia and Surveillance
for Malaria stratification in Ethiopia. The HealthMap provides an excellent
means of analysing epidemiological data, revealing trends, dependencies and
inter-relationships that would be more difficult to discover in tabular format.
It allows policy makers to easily visualise the problems in relation to the
resources and more efficiently target resources to those communities in need.
Public Health resources, the specific diseases and other health events can be
mapped in relation to their surrounding environment and existing health and
social infrastructures. Such information when mapped together creates a powerful
tool for monitoring and management of disease and other public health
programmes.
ChildInfo - ChildInfo is a database initially
developed in India as a database on indicators related to nutrition and
eventually expanded to include over 100 indicators on women and children. The
database developed by UNICEF has simple tools to link with features that allow
users to easily make tables, graphs and maps based on the data, without having
to learn any mapping technology. Graphs and maps on a variety of indicators can
be developed by users with average computer literacy in minutes and can be
directly imported into documents, reports and presentations. The database for
India has indicators and mapping facility down to the district level. ChildInfo
is currently available from UNICEF as a LAN version and will be developed and
available in the public domain as an internet version early next year. The tool
has already expanded to cover not only all countries of the SAARC region of the
sub-continent, but has also expanded to countries of East Asia, Pacific,
Southern and Eastern Africa. Experience with ChildInfo has led the UN community
in India to conceive a common UN Database called DevInfo, on indicators derived
from various UN conferences and World Summits. The DevInfo when fully developed
and released will have mapping facility right upto the block level for India.
Discussion groups - There are many email discussion groups
related to use of GIS in health. One of the such popular groups is the
Health-GIS, an electronic mailing service provided by HealthMap. To subscribe, a
user has to send a message to majordomo@who.ch
with a message "subscribe
health-gis" in the body of the mail.
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