Abstract

This study was carried out to apply geographic information systems (GIS) technology for rapid epidemiological mapping and health-care management of filariasis in India. GIS has essentially become important role in epidemiological mapping, disease monitoring and health information management in India. It has been customized inbuilt facilities to store, retrieve, analysis, and mapping of horizontal and vertical structure of the disease epidemiological information. This study aimed on the application of GIS for rapid epidemiological mapping of disease occurrences, infection rate, age group, sex, disease transmission, site specification of the patients, host availability of the parasite or virus loads, and so on. It was used to state the horizontal and vertical structure of the diseases, history of the disease, etc. with reference to space and times. GIS is not only used to mapping the geographical distributions of disease prevalence (communicable and noncommu- nicable diseases), but also been used to analyze the spatial trend of the disease transmission and the spatial modeling of environmental aspects of disease occurrences, above and beyond. GIS has been used to updating and mapping the disease epidemiological information and perhaps, it was used for disease surveillance, mapping disease transmission risk and for spatial modeling. And hence, it has also become essential tool in mapping the epidemiological information, disease surveillance, health monitoring, surveying, sampling design, disease control programs, predicting the disease transmission, and most importantly, it has become the important decision-making tool in public health disease surveillance and monitoring disease control programs, site selection of health services, health information systems toward and tool for providing a datum of guidelines for decision making and planning toward the achievements of health-care management in India successfully.