Satellite Images Help Fight Disease in Africa

Breeding grounds of mosquitoes that carry disease can now be identified by satellite-based imaging.

The satellite image above is of an area near Nairobi, Kenya, in East Central Africa. The fields colored pink and salmon identify the breeding grounds of mosquitoes that carry the virus for Rift Valley fever.

The mosquito-breeding areas are flood-prone, low-lying grasslands that show up differently in satellite images than the surrounding drier ground. The identification of these areas allows health care officials to fight the disease by applying a hormone that keeps mosquitoes from becoming adults.

Rift Valley fever can cause bleeding, inflammation of the brain, and blindness. Outbreaks of the disease have been recorded in Africa roughly every 20 years. During an outbreak in 1977-78, 600 people died of the disease in Egypt. If the 20-year pattern persists, a new outbreak is due in the mid-1990s.

More Cool Stuff

On November 28-30, 1995, NASA will sponsor a symposium on the use of satellites to monitor and control insect transmitted diseases:

ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/note2edt/1995/n95-77.txt

We found the above image on "Exploring the Environment" at the NASA Classroom of the Future, Wheeling Jesuit College, Wheeling, WV. This NASA-sponsored site promotes the "Public Use of Earth and Space Science Data Over The Internet" and offers a lot of interesting material to students and teachers:

http://cotf.edu/ETE/etehome

You can learn more about the Rift Valley fever and the use of satellite images to combat the disease at:

http://cotf.edu/ETE/scen/rift/riftout.html

The image above is courtesy of Dr. Jerry Freier of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture:

http://www.aphis.usda.gov

Check out other observations in the Observation of the Week Archive.