Remote Imaging Applied to Schistosomiasis Control: The Anning River Project

The use of satellite imaging to remotely detect areas of high risk for transmission of infectious disease is an appealing prospect for large-scale monitoring of these diseases. The detection of large-scale environmental determinants of disease risk, often called landscape epidemiology, has been motivated by several authors (Pavlovsky 1966; Meade et al. 1988). The basic notion is that large-scale factors such as population density, air temperature, hydrological conditions, soil type, and vegetation can determine in a coarse fashion the local conditions contributing to disease vector abundance and human contact with disease agents. These large-scale factors can often be remotely detected by sensors or cameras mounted on satellite or aircraft platforms and can thus be used in a predictive model to mark high risk areas of transmission and to target control or monitoring efforts. A review of satellite technologies for this purpose was recently presented by Washino and Wood (1994) and Hay (1997) and Hay et al. (1997).