Maps

Last night I attended the opening program for Dartmouth's Great Issues in Medicine and Global Health Symposium. This year, the theme is poverty, and as such, the evening's discussion was entitled "Global Health Equity". Speakers included Dr. John Butterly, the executive medical director of DHMC and professor at both the college and the medical school; Tom Ketteridge, the managing director of the Upper Valley Haven; and Dr. Paul Farmer. (As one of Paul Farmer's "groupies", I had little choice but to attend...)

Topics of discussion ranged from rural poverty and homelessness in this area to the implementation of comprehensive care models across the globe. And while I don't plan on going into exhaustive detail , I did think this would be a good place to share one aspect in particular. Dr. Farmer began his discussion by showing two maps from Worldmapper. I took a look at the site today and found an index of over 350 maps--I'll put four here, but I'd encourage everyone to check it out for themselves.

Map 1: Land Area. The "normal" view.

Map 219: Practicing Physicians

Map 213: Public Health Spending

Map 186: Poor (Unsafe) Water

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This last map seemed most relevant for my (hopefully) overarching theme. Bangladesh is visible here--dwarfed in comparison to neighbor India, but larger than both the U.S. and Western Europe. Further, this figure assumes groundwater sources are safe. When such "safe" water sources are also unsafe, what alternatives remain?