The Health GIS Centre of the South African Medical Research Council (MRC) was established by the Malaria Research Lead Programme in 1999 to both bring spatial contexts to the existing malaria research projects (LSDI and MARA), and to support and encourage the use of GIS within the health sector at large in the southern African region. The broad objectives of the health GIS centre are to develop GIS capability in order to support major public health interventions in the region, to develop capacity within appropriate sectors and individuals by supporting the research community, and to maintain a comprehensive GIS database relevant to health research.
Routing GIS support to all projects of the Malaria Research Programme including the LSDI, IVCC-funded Malaria Decision Support Systems (MDSS), the Swaziland Malaria Elimination Effort, RTI International, and the Bioko Island Malaria Control Programme is maintained during 2009. Core routine GIS activities conducted by the Health GIS Centre in support the above mentioned projects include:
- Mapping and maintenance of malaria case (passive and active) data;
- Mapping and maintenance IRS data;
- Mapping and maintenance of entomological surveillance data (species densities and insecticide resistance data);
- Support sentinel site selection by analysing and providing relevant spatial data;
- Maintenance and quality control of spatial aspects of all malaria information systems;
- The maintenance of a comprehensive spatial data repository for study areas;
- Develop GIS related proposals and budgets;
- Acquisition of geo-informatics tools including GIS software and hardware, including GPS, and PDA;
- Preparation of training and training material to MRC stakeholders;
- Development of spatial data and spatial database and dissemination tools.
Highlights
- Collaborative proposal developed and submitted in response to the call by EU-South Africa cooperation in GMES
- The development of a geo-coding tool that includes all reference datasets available for the country and that enables searching by entire string, suffix or prefix, fuzzy searching and limiting searches by location.
- PDA customised software for a Windows based platform was researched and installed/configured. These PDA’s with software installed were successfully used in the IVCC national annual malaria prevalence surveys in 2009 in Malawi and Zambia.
- A national IRS spray locality and indoor residual spraying (IRS) zone boundary dataset was developed during in-depth consultative sessions conducted in-country with field staff for Zambia and Malawi
- Health GIS centre is also involved in other MRC programmes/units and external agencies including:
- MRC Health System Research Unit (Durban)
- MRC Health Promotion Research and Development Group
- MRC HIV Prevention Research Unit (Duran)
- MRC Burden of Disease Research Unit (Cape town)
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