Public health in Tanzania – employing geographic technologies
Climate change, HIV AIDS, water scarcity, food insecurity, ageing populations….these are just a few of the many twenty first century topics that geographers address. In an increasingly complex world no one discipline or perspective is comprehensive enough to understand an issue, and an interdisciplinary approach will always yield better results. Geography merges particularly well with other areas and has long been seen as an integrating subject. Geographers bring a unique spatial perspective, and a sense of scale as well as specific tools that help to identify patterns and processes.
Many of us already make use of GPS, the Global Positioning System, which uses satellite technology to identify a place on earth. It is embedded in much of the technology we use, with smart phones that keep track of our location, ‘geotagged’ facebook posts and satnav to find a route.
GIS stands for ‘geographic information system’ and this uses any data that have a geographical reference such as latitude and longitude. Using GIS, the data can be mapped, visualized analysed and interpreted. Very simply, layers of data are built up.
This tool is increasingly being applied in a wide range of situations by many different users. For example, police forces can map high crime areas and increase their presence where it is clear that more crime is occurring. Electricity companies can see where demand is higher and increase supply. Basically anything that can be placed at a specific location, can be mapped and the patterns visualised, providing relevant and useful information.
This article highlights geographic technologies used in a public health situation, and is an example of how geography can contribute to another field, providing useful information with a spatial perspective.
Public health decisions impact large numbers of people and can be costly both in terms of time and money. They need to be very carefully considered and understood to determine that the impacts will effectively improve the health of a population. For the past twenty years, seven villages in a small area of north west Tanzania, near to Mwanza have been surveyed for demographic information every 3-6 months. Large amounts of data have been collected about households in the area, information about births, deaths, people who have moved in or out, education level etc.
Probably the biggest health challenge in this part of Africa is HIV AIDS. HIV prevalence, the percentage of the population that is HIV positive, is 5.8% in Tanzania, which compares with 0.3% in the UK. Incidence, or the number of new HIV cases, also remains high and many studies exist to find ways to address this. In order to monitor the HIV epidemic and inform public health policy, every three years a serological surveillance is also conducted at this study area to test for HIV and collect information about socio-economics, health and behaviour.