Une approche écoanthropologique de la santé publique
TL;DR: The article demonstrates the need for future public health policies to take new geographic and ecological concepts, such as the pathogenic complex, epidemiological landscape or pathocenosis, need to be integrated into the medical reasoning process.
About: This article is published in Natures Sciences Sociétés.The article was published on 1997-10-01 and is currently open access. It has received 8 citations till now.
Citations
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TL;DR: By the example of environmental monitoring, some applications of geographic information systems, geostatistics, metadata banking, and Classification and Regression Trees (CART) are presented and a corresponding strategy for the detection of vector hot spots in medical epidemiology is recommended.
70 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe the "paleodiet" as a benchmark for present-day efforts to promote health and prevent nutritional diseases, even in industrialized countries, and describe how forest dwellers have adapted to permanent changes of forest ecosystems that are dynamic.
Abstract: SUMMARY Throughout history, forests dwellers have adapted to permanent changes of forest ecosystems that, in essence, are dynamic. Accordingly, they have long served as models of how humans lived when their lifestyles and genetic endowment were complementary. What is now commonly described as the “paleodiet” tends to be put forward as a benchmark for present-day efforts to promote health and prevent nutritional diseases, even in industrialized countries. Although forest ecosystems provide food and medicines to forest dwellers, over the last half-century these ecosystems have undergone unprecedented pressure to make way for economic growth and industrialization, often at the cost of ecological functions that may affect human health, both in short term (i.e. increase in infectious diseases) and long term (incidence of global change). As radical alterations occur such as deforestation, modification of resource availability, and the penetration of cash economies, forest dwellers encounter increasing difficult...
51 citations
TL;DR: The importance of preserving biodiversity mainly in the wildlife ecosystems as an integrated and sustainable approach among others in order to prevent and control the emergence or reemergence of diseases in animals and humans (zoonosis).
Abstract: First we remind general considerations concerning biodiversity on earth and particularly the loss of genetic biodiversity that seems irreversible whether its origin is directly or indirectly linked to human activities. Urgent and considerable efforts must be made from now on to cataloge, understand, preserve, and enhance the value of biodiversity while ensuring food safety and human and animal health. Ambitious integrated and multifield research programs must be implemented in order to understand the causes and anticipate the consequences of loss of biodiversity. Such losses are a serious threat to sustainable development and to the quality of life of future generations. They have an influence on the natural balance of global biodiversity in particularly in reducing the capability of species to adapt rapidly by genetic mutations to survive in modified ecosystems. Usually, the natural immune systems of mammals (both human and animal), are highly polymorphic and able to adapt rapidly to new situations. We more specifically discuss the fact that if the genetic diversity of the affected populations is low the invading microorganisms, will suddenly expand and create epidemic outbreaks with risks of pandemic. So biodiversity appears to function as an important barrier (buffer), especially against disease-causing organisms, which can function in different ways. Finally, we discuss the importance of preserving biodiversity mainly in the wildlife ecosystems as an integrated and sustainable approach among others in order to prevent and control the emergence or reemergence of diseases in animals and humans (zoonosis). Although plants are also part of this paradigm, they fall outside our field of study.
29 citations
Dissertation•
01 Jan 2006
TL;DR: In this article, a systeme d'Information Geographique permet ensuite de cartographier les populations a risque de tuberculose sur l'Ile de Cayenne.
Abstract: Le travail de these vise a comprendre les processus et les dynamiques spatiales de la tuberculose en Guyane, en particulier sur l'Ile de Cayenne, et ce par l'identification des facteurs de risque lies a l'emergence et/ou a la persistance de la maladie sur plusieurs annees (1996-2003). La caracterisation des agregats spaciaux de cas de tuberculose est combinee a une analyse phylogeographique des souches de Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolees en Guyane afin de caracteriser les grappes genetiques de cas, et de determiner les circuits de transmission de la maladie. Un systeme d'Information Geographique permet ensuite de cartographier les populations a risque de tuberculose sur l'Ile de Cayenne. Cette carte est produite en couplant la cartographie des cas de tuberculose a un indice de vulnerabilite de la population, base sur l'analyse qualitative de l'environnement urbain. Cette etude revele certains patrons de transmission de la tuberculose sur l'Ile de Cayenne, apportant a la fois des reponses pour les politiques de sante en Guyane et de nouvelles perspectives de recherche.
13 citations
Additional excerpts
...Au XXe siècle, la pensée scientifique s’est progressivement imprégnée de la notion de complexité, et de la nécessité d’une approche systémique [Froment, 1997], y compris dans le domaine médical....
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Book Chapter•
27 Feb 2008
11 citations
Cites background from "Une approche écoanthropologique de ..."
...There is a pressing need for further anthropological research, especially among the few remaining traditional societies subsisting in close interaction with their forest while confronted with drastic changes in their environment (Froment, 1997)....
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References
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10 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: L'article discute la contribution d'une ecobiologie humaine aux rapports entre agent pathogene, hote, environnement and filtres culturels.
Abstract: Tropical medicine's growing interest in social sciences has not remedied the neglect of some biological aspects related to human species polymorphism. These are adaptability to the environment and variability in time and space. Physical anthropology, when it is enlarged to include population genetics and the influence of the non-linear mode of thinking used in ecological sciences, may provide a good approach for solving problems related to development. Adaptability to a changing environment is partly cultural and partly biological. Medical standards used in developed countries may not be adequate in tropical regions. This paper reviews different areas in which human ecology can be useful to physicians, especially the study of the interactions between pathogens, human hosts, culture, and the physical environment.
5 citations
TL;DR: By focusing more intensively on comparisons among "US blacks," researchers may be able to better identify specific anatomic, physiochemical, or molecular "markers" that will clarify the diversity in clinical response of many African Americans to disease.
4 citations
TL;DR: I have a feeling that the microscope and the discovery of bacterial and protozoan infections sent medicine into the laboratory to the detriment of that special medical capacity of grasping the larger field of the environment.
Abstract: Practitioners of medicine have been ecologists since long before the word 'ecology' emerged, or the definition of the science as the relation of the organism to the whole environment, to other organisms of different species and with those of its own kind. Hippocrates was very definite in his environmental approach; airs and waters made no empty phrase in ancient medicine. Sometimes, as in speculation on malaria, an involved intellectual environmental structure could be worked out which was completely untrue, but which could be in some measure effectual: if you avoided the miasma you could avoid malaria. Miasmas were about as far as one could get without the microscope, but once the mosquito and the Plasmodium were nailed there grew an intensive ecological corpus of knowledge on the mosquitoes and their habitats which is still being augmented. Pittendrigh's work on mosquitoes and epiphytic growths in Trinidad in the early 1940s was quite beautiful. Nevertheless, I have a feeling that the microscope and the discovery of bacterial and protozoan infections sent medicine into the laboratory to the detriment of that special medical capacity of grasping the larger field of the environment. Resulting from Metchnikov's work, for example, there grew a crazy abhorrence of the intestinal flora: an attitude typical of arguing from the small to the universal, the non-ecological. Now, we realize the symbiotic quality of that flora, and though our increasingly aseptic surgery recognizes the necessity of excluding bacteria from highly unnatural situations, we tend in ordinary life to accept the Yorkshireman's dictum that you have to eat your peck before you die. We arrive at health and well-being by building up tolerances and resistances from living in the larger world rather than by retreating into an ivory tower of exclusion which spells susceptibility. Indeed we know from animal experimentation that exclusion of the normal stresses of nmicrobial existence can result in severe physiological abnormalities. We all live in a larger world.
3 citations