Integrating different knowledge systems has been a recurring theme at this conference. In a session yesterday on climate change and health equity, Dziedzom de Souza of the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research in Ghana offered up an intriguing idea to make the most of data gathered via geographical information systems (GIS).
De Souza wants to see GIS data integrated into health information systems. This seems obvious, but many countries don’t do this. Countries like the USA are top of the list in using such data when looking at how climate change affects the health of the poor, but regions like West Africa are barely using GIS data in this way at all.
Why does this matter? 80% of health data is intricately linked to geography, de Souza said. This has implications for health generally, but especially when we look at how climate change affects disease. For example, tropical diseases vary with climate variations in terms of their intensity and spread. Climate change is also altering the geographical spread of vector-borne diseases. Countries in West Africa, for instance, will much more vulnerable to these shifts in disease patterns than the USA.
None of this has to cost poor countries a lot of money. There is a wealth of free GIS data available in WHO’s Health Mapper and Google Earth, for example. Developing countries will need all the data they can get to fight climate change. It’s time they start making use of these tools.