The geography of the flu virus
December 9th, 2009 by admin
by Karina Graf, from the Inside Scoop newsletter for UW co-op students
Andrew Janes’ most recent co-op term has been a jumble of secrecy and confidentiality.
When first approached for an interview, he agreed. However, soon afterwards he said he couldn’t release any information. His emails sounded 007-esque, with lines like, “until it is released there is not much I can mention” and “the information I could provide at the moment wouldn’t be enough.”
With all the secrecy, you might think he was working for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) on a top-secret plot to foil terrorists. Actually, he was studying the spread of the H1N1 virus.
You’ve heard the buzz for months now . . . use hand sanitizer like it’s going out of style. But how do we actually know what’s going on with the H1N1 virus (previously known as “swine flu”)? Janes(right), a 3B geography student, spent his past two co-op terms at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto studying the virus’s spread with a team of experts.
With co-op terms in fall 2008 and spring 2009, he started his second term soon after the outbreak in Mexico was first recognized. His team of physicians, epidemiologists, mathematicians, statisticians, geographers and public health officials accurately predicted how the virus would spread. “With the recent outbreak we’ve been analyzing travel patterns and the spread of H1N1 around the globe,” says Janes. “Our work’s been used to provide information to the province and government during the height of the outbreak.”
As a research assistant/cartographer, he used his Geographic Information System skills learned at Waterloo to map these global travel patterns. “I’m helping in the production of maps and figures for use in reports and journals, and the creation of web maps for display on the biodiaspora.com website.”
The research team began developing a system after the 2003 SARS crisis. The system rapidly evaluates air traffic patterns to accurately predict how diseases and viruses will travel around the world. According to a CTV news article, the team’s H1N1 analysis was conducted less than 24 hours after the virus appeared.
The original secrecy surrounding the project was to prevent information leaking before the report was complete. It has since been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, used by Canadian government health agencies, including the Public Health Agency of Canada, and attracted media attention.
For a geography student, work at St. Michael’s came as a bit of a surprise. “After growing up with a parent in the medical field, I’ve always been surrounded by the health world,” he says, “At first I wasn’t aware of the connections between geography and the medical community, but this co-op position changed the way I look at the use of geography. Most people think geographers will end up teaching, analyzing the physical environment or just making maps, but this position opened my eyes to the variety of uses for GIS and just how diverse geography can be. Geography can be used just about anywhere and using it in medicine is a great way to have a positive influence on the world. I’d like to continue apply my knowledge of cartography and geography within the medical community.”
