PROGRESS IN GEOGRAPHY ›› 2010, Vol. 29 ›› Issue (1): 45-51.doi: 10.11820/dlkxjz.2010.01.006

• Original Articles • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Progress and Prospects of Schistosomiasis-medical Geography

ZHAO An, JIANG Meixin, JIAN Minfei, NI Caiying   

  1. Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang 330022, China
  • Online:2010-01-25 Published:2010-01-25

Abstract:

Medical geography has a long research history, nonetheless schistosomiasis-medical geography is relatively laggard in the field of Geography, where a lot of study was made by non-geographical professionals. This paper first studied the basic connotation and the principal contents of Schistosomiasis-medical Geography according to the mechanism of schistosomiasis transmission. Monitoring and prediction of snail habitats and schistosomiasis epidemicity were regarded as the principal study contents of Schistosomiasis-medical Geography. Second, connection of geographical factor pairs of meteorology and climatology, soil and vegetation, geomorphology and altitude, hydrology and hydraulics, human and economic factor with the shistosome and its hosts were systematically summarized, which was deemed as the foundation of Schistosomiasis-medical Geography. Third, the key research means for determination and prediction of snail habitats and schistosomiasis epidemicity by remote sensing, GIS and statistics (including geo-statistics) were reviewed worldwide, 7 kinds of prediction methods for snail habitats and 5 kinds of prediction methods for schistosomiasis epidemicity were concluded. 7 kinds of prediction methods for snail habitats were interpretation and cartography of snail habitats, meteorologically based method, images-retrieved information based method, unsupervised classification based method, dynamic monitoring of snail habitats in periods of floods, relation between geographic factors and snail habitats based method, and knowledge driven fuzzy-classification method. 5 kinds of prediction methods for schistosomiasis epidemicity were cartography and spatial auto-relation analysis, schistosomiasis transmission index modeling at large scale, quantitative modeling of various life phases of shistosoma and their hosts, regressive relational analysis and Bayesian modeling between epidemicity and geographic factors, and relation study between epidemicity, snail habitats and contact index of infected waters. Finally this paper analyzed the main challenges and endeavor directions for Schistosomiasis-medical Geography in the future.

Key words: GIS, challenges and prospects, schistosomiasis medical-geography, impacts of geographical factors, application of remote sensing &