Seriously ill? Diagnosing the state of medical geography in South Africa

Abstract

South African research in medical geography was described in the early 1990s as ‘meagre and unsatisfactory’. But there was optimism for the future. This paper gauges the extent to which this subdiscipline of geography has, over the past two decades, lived up to these expectations. Our impression is that it has not grown significantly in South Africa. This, despite a substantial increase in interdisciplinary health research which might include geographers among its contributors. This paper reviews completed postgraduate work in medical geography, describes trends in research approaches to the connection between urbanization and health over the past two decades, and discusses reasons for the dearth of research contributions by South African geographers.

Keywords:

• Medical geography
• disease geography
• health geography
• housing and health
• urbanization and health
• planning and health

Notes

1. Note that the literature review in this section goes beyond the search terms related to ‘medical geography’, ‘health geography’, and ‘disease geography’ and includes both academic papers and theses.