ABSTRACT
One of the major historical aims of Disease Ecology within Medical Geography has been to integrate environmental, economic, social and biological knowledge of disease causation for individual places, as epitomised by the work of J. M. May. The use of systems in the analysis of human phenomena has developed substantially since its early presentation as General Systems Analysis. Of the use of these closed systems in dealing with human phenomena M. Chisholm wrote 'General systems theory seems to be an irrelevant distraction', a theme later echoed by J. Langton and Huggett. Wider integration has become one of the major challenges for Geographical Information Systems in multi-dimensional and spatially based research projects. The health implications of environmental change through displacement is relevant to the hypothesis on the ecology of pathogens since resettling people may become exposed to new areas of endemic disease or contribute to creating the ecological conditions for a new endemic focus.
