SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA ASSOCIATION OF MEDICAL GEOLOGY (SAMEG) Including registration form.

Inaugural Meeting, Maputo, Mozambique, 06 July, 2006
Photos from Maputo

On this page this association will publish information on meetings, plans, activities etc.

RECENT ACTIVITIES

PLANNING MEETING HELD IN EDINBURGH 09 SEPTEMBER 2003

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF MEDICAL GEOLOGY IN AFRICA

T.C. Davies, SES, Moi University, P.O. Box 3900, Eldoret, Kenya
daviestheo@hotmail.com

The relationship between the geological environment and regional and local variations in disease such as various cancers, heart disease and osteoporosis in people have been observed for many years in Africa. This realization grew rapidly since the late 1960’s, at about the same time that the principles of geochemical exploration began to be incorporated in mineral exploration programmes on the continent. These developments paralleled growth in an already emerging science that came to be termed ‘Geomedicine’ in the North but now referred to as ‘Medical Geology’ by international consensus. The foundations of this science were firmly laid by the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters who, under the chairmanship of Prof. Jul Låg, convened a symposium in Oslo in May, 1978 to provide a reciprocal orientation for, and contact between, researchers engaged in this field. From the discussions, the Symposium rightly noted that scientists in other countries will, at a later stage, be interested in joining an organized research effort.

In Africa, although evidence suggesting associations between the geological environment and disease continues to accumulate (see for example, Davies, 2003), the real significance in many cases, remains to be fully appreciated. The reasons for the lack of conclusive results are threefold. First, a paucity of reliable epidemiological data about incidence, prevalence and trends in disease occurrence; second, the frequent lack of a geochemist in teams investigating disease epidemiology and aetiology; and third, the lack of analytical facilities for measuring the contents of nutritional and toxic elements at very low concentration levels in environmental samples (Davies, 1996).

Confronting such challenges successfully will be exceedingly rewarding because it is thought that the strongest potential significance of such correlations would exist in Africa and other developing regions of the world. This is because unlike the developed world where most people no longer eat food grown only in their own area, in Africa most of the population live close to the land, and are exposed in their daily lives, through food and water intake, to whatever trace elements have become concentrated in crops from their farms.

The first organized effort in coordinating researches aimed at clarifying these relationships took place in Nairobi in 1999 when the East and Southern Africa Regional Workshop on Geomedicine was convened, bringing together over sixty interdisciplinary scientists from the region (Davies and Schlüter, 1999). One outcome of this Workshop was the constitution of ‘the East and Southern Africa Association of Medical Geology’ (ESAAMEG) as a branch of the ‘International Working Group on Medical Geology’ (IWGMG) which was itself established in Athens in June, 1997. It has now been reconstituted to the International Medical Geology Association (IMGA).

Another Workshop, ‘Geomed ‘2001’ in Zambia in 2001, just two years after the Nairobi Workshop testifies to the burst of interest and research activities generated by that first workshop (Ceruti, Davies and Selinus, 2001). The Zambia Workshop which was held in conjunction with two short courses (‘Metals, Health and the Environment’ and ‘Geoindicators’) attracted a host of participants not only from the Africa region but also from around the world. These meetings have now become a biennial event. As a result of this increasing awareness of Medical Geology problems, growth in the membership and activities of groups such as ESAAMEG has continued to spiral. This is a welcome sign on both sides of what has often been an unbridged chasm between geology and health in Africa.

REFERENCES

Appleton, J.D., Fuge, R. and McCall, G.J.H. (Ed.), 1996. Environmental Geochemistry and health With Special Reference to Developing Countries. Geological Society Special Publication No. 113, Publ. by the Geological Society. 264 p.

Berger, A.R, Selinus, O. and Skinner, H.C.W., 2001. “Medical geology” - an emerging discipline. EPISODES, Vol. 24, No. 1, p. 43 – 44.

Ceruti, P.O., 2000. Soil nutrient deficiencies in an area of endemic osteoarthritis (Mseleni Joint Disease) and dwarfism in Maputoland, South Africa. Abstract Volume, Symoposium on Health and the Environment, 04 – 06 September, 2000, Uppsala, Sweden.

Ceruti, P.O., Davies, T.C. and Selinus, O., 2001. GEOMED ‘2001 - Medical Geology, The African Perspective. EPISODES, Vol. 24, No. 4, 268 - 270.

Davies, T.C., 1996. Geomedicine in Kenya. Journal of African Earth Sciences, Vol. 23, No. 4, p. 577 – 591.

Davies, T.C., 2000. Editorial. Special Issue, Environmental Geochemistry and Health, Vol. 24.

Davies, T.C. and Schluter. T., 2002. Current Status of research in geomedicine in East and Southern Africa. Special Issue, Environmental Geochemistry and Health, Vol. 24, p. 99 - 102.

Davies, T.C., 2003. Some environmental problems of geomedical relevance in East and Southern Africa. In : H.C.W. Skinner and A. Berger, “Geology and Health : Closing the Gap”, p. 139 - 144, Oxford University Press Inc., USA.