Conservation medicine

Conservation medicine
Disability-adjusted life year for malaria per 100,000 inhabitants in 2002.
  no data
  ≤10
  10-50
  50-100
  100-250
  250-500
  500-1000
  1000-1500
  1500-2000
  2000-2500
  2500-3000
  3000-3500
  ≥3500

Conservation medicine is an emerging, interdisciplinary field that studies the relationship between human and animal health, and environmental conditions. Also known as ecological medicine, environmental medicine, or medical geology.

The environmental causes of health problems are complex, global, and poorly understood. Conservation medicine practitioners form multidisciplinary teams to tackle these issues. Teams may involve physicians and veterinarians working alongside researchers and clinicians from diverse disciplines, including microbiologists, pathologists, landscape analysts, marine biologists, toxicologists, epidemiologists, climate biologists, anthropologists, economists, and political scientists.

Clinical areas include HIV, Lyme disease, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), avian influenza, West Nile virus, Malaria, Nipah virus, and other emerging infectious diseases.

The term conservation medicine was first used in the mid-1990s, and represents a significant paradigm shift in both medicine and environmentalism. While the hands-on process in individual cases is complicated, the underlying concept of interrelationships is quite intuitive, namely, that all things are related. The threat of zoonotic diseases—cross-species diseases that travel to humans from other animals—is central. For example, burning huge areas of forest to make way for farmland is normally seen as an environmental and economic concern. That action may displace a wild animal species, which comes into contact with and infects a domesticated animal species, creating a veterinary problem. The domesticated animal then enters the human food chain and infects people, and a new health threat emerges. Conventional approaches to environmental protection and animal and human health only as an exception examine these connections, whereas in conservation medicine, such relationships are fundamental. Professionals from the many disciplines involved, who usually operate in well-separated spheres, necessarily work closely together.

Contents

Social impact

By looking at the environment and health as a continuum, conservation medicine has the potential to effect rapid change in public opinion on complex societal issues, by making the distant and ill-defined, local and pressing. For instance, global warming may have vaguely defined long-term impacts, but when an immediate effect is a relatively slight rise in air temperature, which in turn raises the flight ceiling for temperature-sensitive mosquitoes, allowing them to infect higher flying migratory birds, which in turn carry a disease from one country or continent to another, the issue becomes more real. Likewise, the broad topic of suburban sprawl is made more relevant when seen in terms of the immediate imbalance it brings to rural ecosystems, which increases population densities and forces humans into closer contact with, certain animals (like rodents), increasing the risk of new cross-species diseases. Seemingly common sense scenarios like these lie at the heart of conservation medicine. When tied to actual cases (like SARS or HIV/AIDS), this holistic outlook seems likely to resonate more powerfully with the public than the more abstract explanations of environmental and health issues that are currently common.

See also

References

External links


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужно сделать НИР?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • conservation of mass — n a principle in classical physics: the total mass of any material system is neither increased nor diminished by reactions between the parts called also conservation of matter, law of conservation of matter …   Medical dictionary

  • conservation of energy — n a principle in physics: the total energy of an isolated system remains constant irrespective of whatever internal changes may take place with energy disappearing in one form reappearing in another called also first law of thermodynamics, law of …   Medical dictionary

  • Medicine, transfusion — Blood transfusion and blood conservation are the complementary activities that constitute the clinical arena of transfusion medicine. Blood transfusion is the transfer of blood or blood products from one person (the donor) into another person s… …   Medical dictionary

  • Medicine — This article is about the science and art of healing. For pharmaceutical drugs, see Medication. For other uses, see Medicine (disambiguation). Statue of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine, holding the symbolic Rod of Asclepius with its coiled… …   Wikipedia

  • Medicine Hat Public Library — Established 1915 Location Medicine Hat, Alberta Branches …   Wikipedia

  • Medicine Bow Mountains — Range Snowy Range from …   Wikipedia

  • Medicine Hat Police Service — Logo of the Medicine Hat Police Service. Motto Serving and Protecting With Pride …   Wikipedia

  • conservation — 1. Preservation from loss, injury, or decay. 2. In sensorimotor theory, the mental operation by which an individual retains the idea of an object after its removal in time or space. [L. conservatio, a preserving, keeping] c. of en …   Medical dictionary

  • Conservation of slow lorises — Slow lorises, such as this Bengal slow loris (Nycticebus bengalensis) were once considered common, but are now recognized as threatened species. Slow lorises are nocturnal strepsirrhine primates in th …   Wikipedia

  • conservation — conservational, adj. /kon seuhr vay sheuhn/, n. 1. the act of conserving; prevention of injury, decay, waste, or loss; preservation: conservation of wildlife; conservation of human rights. 2. official supervision of rivers, forests, and other… …   Universalium

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
… Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”