How to Use Health Map Website to Find Disease Information

March 06, 2018

As Ray Kurzweil once said, “Our intuition about the future is linear. But the reality of information is exponential, and that makes a profound difference. If I take 30 steps linearly, I get to 30. If I take 30 steps exponentially, I get to a billion.” Technology has changed the way people think. Technology has led to numerous known advancement in various disciplines globally, which make life better. Therefore, nobody can refute Kurzweil’s statement about technology.

Technology has played significant roles in the health sector. Some of these roles include the invention of HealthMap. In 2006, a group of software developers, researchers, and epidemiologists at Boston Children’s Hospital developed HealthMap. It is a recognized global leader in using virtual informal sources of disease outbreak monitoring. Furthermore, it utilizes real-time surveillance of emerging public health threats. HealthMap website (healthmap.org) is freely available and it provides real-time intelligence on a broad spectrum of developing infectious diseases for a different audience encompassing government, local health departments, international travelers, and libraries.

With HealthMap you do not need to worry! Are you an international traveler or are you interested in any health information about infectious diseases across the globe? If you are then this article best fits you. It describes step-by-step instructions on how to use healthmap.org to find disease information anywhere in the world.

Step 1: Visit healthmap.org website. You can access it via healthmap.org.

Step 2: Browse the website a bit to familiarize with it.

Step 3: Look for the Search button. It is located at the top left side of the main page.

Step 4: Click on the Search button. It will display diseases, location, source, species, and date.

Step 5: Click on the Location button. It will show ‘All locations’: ‘Choose a precise location’ and ‘Choose countries’. Enter the name of your preferred location in either rectangle box (‘Choose a precise location’ or ‘Choose countries’).

Step 6: Move to Species button. It will display ‘All species’: ‘Choose a species’. Enter ‘Humans’ in a rectangular box.

Step 7: Navigate to the Date tab. Select your preferred period. You can choose ‘last month’, ‘today’ and ‘past week’ and so on.

Step 8: After you have done everything and they are correct, move to ‘submit search’. It will display the map of that country and dots where the disease outbreaks have occurred. You can click on the dots to see some disease outbreaks happening around that country.

Step 9: Move to List View button located at the top right side of the main page. It will display all the disease outbreaks in your selected country.

Step 10: On the displayed page, click summary of the disease outbreak. This will link you to more information related to that particular disease outbreak.

Example:

Let us say we want to check a disease outbreak in Kenya. We will access healthmap.org website as described in step 1(See Picture 1).

Picture 1:

We will then proceed to step 3(See Picture 2) and step 5(See Picture 3 and Picture 4).

Picture 2:

Picture 3:

Picture 4:

After selecting the preferred country (Kenya), we will navigate to Species button (Step 6, See Picture 5) and selected ‘Humans’. This will lead to the next step (Step 7), selecting a period (See Picture 6). We have chosen past month. Finally, we submit our search (Step 8) then continue with steps 9 and 10 (See Pictures 7, 8, and 9).