Near-real-time flood mapping has the potential to empower public health officials to plan and coordinate essential health care and public health services more effectively and efficiently.
Medical anthropologist Craig Janes and his colleagues are using an open-access geographic information system and a satellite imaging system to better predict floods, identify and respond to malaria hotspots, and to generally improve the public health response in the Western Province of Zambia.
“In the new global health environment,” he says, “we are faced with critical and contentious policy questions and decisions about how health services can best be expanded using these newly available resources.”