Mapping Disease Across the Globe
In the future, antibiotic resistance could increase dramatically across the globe, affecting both people and animals. One Health researcher Thomas Van Boeckel investigates environmental factors, global patterns of infectious disease and antibiotic resistance in order to better combat these issues.
Sometimes a misunderstanding contains a kernel of truth. When Thomas Van Boeckel talks about what he does for a living, he calls his field spatial epidemiology. This sometimes raises the question: what’s this epidemiology in space all about? Contrary to what some assume, Van Boeckel’s work has nothing to do with ailing astronauts. In this his research, “spatial” refers to the geographical aspect of epidemiology. His field of expertise is also known as health geography. Van Boeckel is interested in how diseases differ in humans and animals around the world – and how they are related.
This is one of the key questions posed by One Health. The disciplines of medicine, veterinary medicine and environmental science collaborate on this still-nascent approach, because human, animal and environmental health are all closely linked. Many infectious diseases that occur in humans have a zoological origin – take, for example, the current outbreak of bird flu, which has already been transmitted to farm workers via cows in the US.
Satellites make it all possible
The University of Zurich founded its One Health Institute in 2023 (see box). In August 2024, Thomas Van Boeckel became its first chair. And as it turns out, spatial epidemiology does have something to do with space after all: satellites are one of the most important tools for data acquisition in the field. “Satellite technology is a revolution in our area of study,” says Van Boeckel. These images make it easy to obtain important epidemiological data across national borders, including information on temperature, air quality or the extent of deforestation. Thanks to satellites, livestock numbers can also be estimated based on the size of agricultural buildings or the acreage of forage crops for animals.
Spatial epidemiology can thus make an important contribution to One Health research. In addition, other avenues such as genetic testing, to take one example, are just as important as conducting surveys and analyzing cellphone data to record people’s health and travel behavior.
Spatial data have been central to epidemiology since its inception. In 1845, the physician John Snow tried to find out what triggered the outbreak of a cholera epidemic in London. He took a map of the city and marked each house with a case of the disease. This allowed him to recognize a pattern in the disease’s distribution, and to identify contaminated water from a particular pump as the cause.
Recognizing such geographical patterns is Thomas Van Boeckel’s daily work. His focus is on infectious disease and antibiotic resistance. His interest in geography started at a young age. Even as a child, he was fascinated by maps, which led his grandparents to gift him a globe. Despite this fascination, Van Boeckel went on to study bioengineering. However, he found lab work didn’t captivate him as he had imagined. Then, after a lecture on biostatistics had caught his interest, he went on to write several papers and his dissertation on the spread of a variant of bird flu in Asia. He increasingly realized that, “by helping to explain the risk factors and patterns of disease spread, I can contribute to prevention and health promotion.”
Adrian Ritter, Translation: Georgia Gray