Publication
Among the factors of health risks in urban areas, the solid and liquid wastes worsen particularly the problems of public health in developing countries. Uncontrolled solid waste disposal sites and waste water sites constitute major sources of danger for public health. Often, there is no mapped and documented inventory. The perception of danger related to infectious sources by the exposed populations is generally not well-known and even often ignored by the public institutions in their management policy of health and wastes. The same can be considered for the link between diagnosed diseases in health care services and the presence of waste disposal sites near patients' residences. The goal of this study is to determine the main factors of waste management and their consequences on health. This goal shall be reached using a GIS approach and through a case study concerning two districts in the town of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. In detail, the objectives are: i) to build a spatial database for waste disposal sites and public health care management and to propose a methodological approach for the elaboration of a GIS, associating social science, health and the geographical information science; ii) to identify and to analyze indicators of public health related to domestic and industrial waste; ii) to compare these indicators with the different actors' perception, according to the distance and dangers represented by the seriousness of potential danger sources; iv) to analyze if there is a relation between the actors' perception and the diseases diagnosed in health care services; v) to promote GIS in institutional structures in order to facilitate decision-making in waste management. Geographical information science has contributed to the creation of a database containing general geographical data, the disposal waste sites, the data of the actors' perception and health data. This database was used for spatial-thematic, temporal and statistical analyses. At first we have established an inventory of disposal waste sites. Hereafter we have analyzed their spatial influence. We then compared the situation to the perception of dangers and to the people's health risks, related to the distance to sources of potential danger. An analysis of the relation between the disease cases listed (counted) in health centers and the presence of waste (infectious) sources was carried out. This allowed some degree of comparison between the subjectivity of danger perception and the reality. The inventory of potential danger sources and the analysis of their influence spheres shows that 86 % (456 ha) of the study area is threatened by a danger, among which 45 % (235 ha) are considered exposed to a higher danger. The results also show that only 14 % of the population in both sectors (2'574 inhabitants of 18'978 total inhabitants) is not exposed to potential health risks. The analysis of the perceived danger according to the distance revealed that the perceived danger generally
Dario Floreano, Bokeon Kwak, Markéta Pankhurst, Jun Shintake
Paul Joseph Dyson, Mingyang Liu, Xinbang Wu