From a satellite orbiting 500 miles above the earth, the jungles of central Africa can look disarmingly innocent. To the untrained eye, their wrinkled swathes of green offer no hint of the potentially lethal infectious diseases lurking within. But for the past two years, African epidemiologists studying images from earth observation satellites have found that for those who know how to look, those images may contain clues about when and where such diseases might erupt.
At Gabon's International Centre for Medical Research, for example, Ghislain Moussavou has been using data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Envisat satellite to help predict outbreaks of Ebola hemorrhagic fever. When Ebola emerges from the deep jungle to strike human populations, the effects can be devastating. In the absence of any effective treatments, Moussavou explains, "prediction, prevention, and fast control of epidemics must constitute a major priority in public health."
The trouble is, scientists ...
