Some results and prospects of the activities of the working group on “the geography of health” under the aegis of the international geographical union

Abstract

The 23rd International Geographical Congress in Moscow in 1976 set up a Working Group on the Geography of Health, on the basis that ecological medical geography (or nosogeography) should be continued and improved in order to deepen knowledge of different disease patterns. Interdisciplinary effort, including cartography, should be extended to cover health as well as illness. Geographical monitoring systems also should be studied and where possible actively instituted.

Achievements between 1976 and 1980 include various articles in encyclopaedias, textbooks and geomedical monographs. The role of Geographia Medica from Budapest is outlined and illustrated, as is that of abstracting services like Excerpta Medica and Series 36, the U.S.S.R. abstracting journal (Meditzinskaya Geographica—Referativyi Zhurnal Viniti) and a plea is made for international collaboration in abstracting.

The 24th International Geographical Congress in Tokyo in 1980 included papers on distinctive geographical patterns of diseases in different countries, on atlases, on infectious diseases—especially in developing countries—and on chronic diseases in developed countries but also affecting the developing world.

In the U.S.S.R., studies on ecological medical geography include complex research on “nosoareals” in infectious and noninfectious diseases and parallels are now being drawn between, for instance, the incubation period of infections and the latent period of some neoplasms—some of which may be linked with slow viruses. Horizontal transmission of noninfectious diseases, however, does not occur.

Health is now being studied geographically, and one approach concerns health viewed ecologically and in terms of preventive medicine in areas of new economic development. The present scientifictechnical revolution is seen as an ecosystem problem with physical, chemical, biological and social aspects focussing on material and energy exchanges. Examples are given ranging from pollution to genetic and allergic diseases.

A Working Group symposium at the 14th Pacific Science Congress at Khabarovsk concentrated on medico-geographical regionalization in the Pacific area.

Computer mapping and atlas-making are discussed in relation to Britain, the Comecon countries, U.S.A. and Japan and the studies of seasonal mortality by Sakamoto-Momiyama in Japan. The application of regionalization studies of noninfectious diseases was a particular concern at the 5th meeting of medical geographers of U.S.S.R. in 1979.

Examples are given of urban-rural differences in cancers and other noninfectious diseases and methodological problems identified such as multifactorial analyses, control groups and the environmental and socially rooted complexities in the concept of health. Studies of extremes, e.g. of climate, linked with monitoring systems, may be useful, as also research on sunspot activity, genetics, anthropophysiology in areas differing in physical environment and in technological development, migration, risk groups, and application in preventive medicine. It is hoped that discussions at the Tokyo Congress may advance these causes.