Global Medical Geography : Essays in Honour of Prof. Yola Verhasselt

Contents: Acknowledgment. Preface. Yola Verhasselt: a profile/Rais Akhtar. Yola Verhasselt and Latin American Medical Geography/Susana Isabel Curto. Yola Verhasselt: Academician and administrator/David R. Phillips. Introduction: current concerns in medical geography/Rais Akhtar. I. Conceptual and methodological aspects: 1. The origins of the term 'medical geography'/Frank A. Barrett. 2. Medical geography: Has J.M. May Borrowed M. Sorre's 1933 concept of pathogenic complexes?/Rais Akhtar. 3. Global perspectives in health/Boutros-Pierre Mansourian. 4. Quality of life: the essence of the geography of health/Bryan H. Massam and Ranu Basu. II. Disease ecology: 5. Community drinking water wells in the Fresno/Clovis Metropolitan Area, California/Helmut Kloos. 6. Prevalence of AIDS in highland and lowland districts of the Chiang Mai Province, Thailand/Harald Leisch. 7. Environment, health, population displacement and sustainable development: the case of Cholera and Bacillary dysentery/Andrew Elivin Collins. 8. Diffusion of human immunodeficiency virus with special reference to developing countries/Anupa Mukhopadhyay and Ashok K. Dutt. 9. Water quality and health in Malaysia/Wah Yun Low and Khairuddin Yusof. 10. Diversity in the geography of natural-endemic diseases/Svetlana M. Malkhazova and Boris A. Alexeev. 11. Pesticide exposure and female breast cancer in rural settings in Quebec, Canada/Marcellin C. Gangbe, Jean-Pierre Thouez, Jean Latreille and Parviz Ghadirian. III. Health Care: 12. Health care services and regional development: a medicometric approach/Antoine Bailly. 13. Health service development then and now: Tanzania revisited/Oscar Gish. 14. The dynamics of hospital Catchment areas:  the example of Tanzanian Lutheran Hospitals/Steffen Flessa. 15. GIS, spatial epidemiology and health care planning/Jacek Malczewski. 16. Some aspects of health care provision in Cameroon: a bridge between Anglophone and Francophone Africa/David Stevenson. 17. Health care facilities in the regional context of Umbria, Italy/Giovanni M.P. De Santis. 18. The changing face of disease and health care in Ghana/Joseph R. Oppong. 19. Muslim or Greek? Past and present of Yunani Medicine in the Deccan/Fabrizio Speziale. IV. Development and health: 20. Population health and environmental health as determinants of socio-economic development/R. Warwick Armstrong. 21. Medical infrastructure and demographic and socio-economic development in Northern Thailand/Harald Leisch. 22. Economic development and women's blood pressure: field evidence from rural Mashonaland Zimbabwe/John M. Hunter, Barbara T. Sparks, Jacob Mufunda, Cephas T. Musbayane, Harvey V. Sparks and Kassam Mahomed. 23. Ageing in the Asia-Pacific region: the challenges of success David R. Phillips. V. Women's health: 24. Women, Schistosomiasis transmission and strategies for control: a case study in the Nile Delta/Susan Watts and Samiha El Katsha. 25. Women's health, environment and development in the Arab world/Salma Al-Khudairi and Nancy Hudson Rodd. 26. Health status of women in rural areas of Kashmir Valley/Nilofar Izhar. VI. Progress in Medical geography: 27. Development of medical Geography in Germany (1990-2003): from geomedicine towards geography of health/Thomas Kistemann. 28. Progress in geography of health in Italy/C. Palagiano and L. Romagnoli. 29. Medical Geography in India (2000-2006)/Rais Akhtar and Nilofar Izhar. Index.

"Medical geography is an area of geographical research that incorporates geographic techniques into the study of health around the world and studies the impact of climate and location on an individual's health as well as the distribution of health services. It is an important branch of human geography because it aims to provide an understanding of health problems and improve the health of people worldwide based on the various geographic factors influencing them.

This essential reader in medical geography has a wide ranging and international appeal. This anthology compiled in honour of Prof. Yola Verhasselt also reviews the progress and current state of the subject. This volume has been divided into six sections:

• Section I deals with conceptual and methodological aspects of medical geography.
• Section II of the book deals with case studies on disease ecology.
• Section III of the book pertains to studies in health care geography.
• Section IV is devoted to case studies on development and health.
• Section V concerns with studies on women's health.
  Section VI examines the progress made in the field of medical geography in Germany,. Italy and India.

The book will be helpful to geographers, environmentalists and health care professionals." (jacket)