Les maladies parasitaires en milieu urbain : intérêt et limites de l’analyse spatiale

Abstract

Health data may be located and their spatial organization detected thanks to the Geographic Information System technologies. In fact, the GIS applications in the health sector multiplied in the nineties and are booming today. Data spatial analysis indeed enables geographers and health professionals to have a new approach towards medical phenomena in their geographical context. The health GIS recent use brings major interests in epidemiology and the care system study, but it has limitations and constraints, the medical data hardly ever being collected at the beginning to be integrated in a GIS.The example of a GIS creation to study parasitic diseases in Mbandjock in Cameroon makes it possible to illustrate the interest and the limitations of GIS to analyse complex data resulting from very different sources.Districts of this city which owes its growth to the establishment of a sugar industry in the sixties show important disparities of parasitic situations, that the use of GIS may help to specify or explain.

Keywords

• geographical information system
• parasitic infection
• space at risk
• Cameroon