Experts from seven African countries are meeting in Huye District of Southern Province November 12-23, to discuss how to put health on the Map and addressing Public Health Challenges Using Spatial Data and Geo-information Tools.
The meeting was organized by the Centre for Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing of the National University of Rwanda (CGIS-NUR) in collaboration with the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation of the University of Twente and Royal Tropical Institute both based in Netherlands.
Prof. Herman Musahara, the Director of Planning and Development at NUR stated that while African countries put ahead economic growth, the latter can’t be achieved without growth in the public health sector.
He said, “The health sector in Africa faces several challenges some of which being caused by the steps taken in the road to economic growth.”
However, the achievements in this road carry also solutions to public health challenges noting example that “the advances in technology can bring solutions to several problems that have hampered the public health sector growth for several years”.
According to Dr. Ente Rood, the Biomedical and Environment researcher at Royal Tropical Institute, Geographic Information System (GIS) is recognized worldwide as a tool to understand and analyse the relationships between environmental changes and their impact on human health.
Participants in this refresher course are from Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Malawi, Ghana and Bourkinafaso.
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