|
Date: March 20, 2008 (Thursday)
Time: 12:30 – 14:00 (sandwich lunch from 12:30 –12:45; seminar begins at 12:45)
Venue: Seminar Room 6, LG-1/F, Laboratory Block, Faculty of Medicine Building, 21 Sassoon Road, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
Abstract:
The seminar starts with a historical perspective on urbanisation and development of megacities worldwide highlighting different trends for developed and developing countries. Future trends show that a particularly high proportion of urban growth and megacity numbers can be observed in South and South East Asia. On the one hand they represent focal points of globalisation with a high concentration of economical activities and industrial production with high dynamism in all processes and thus form driving forces of development, on the other hand megacities are characterised by an uncontrolled spatial expansion with unregulated land and property markets that may lead to insufficient housing provision with marginal settlements, large social disparities, ecological strain and overload, infrastructural deficits and finally in a loss of governability.
Health problems in megacities are characterised by a globalisation and megapolisation of disease and influenced by a variety of factors such as population dynamics (e.g. migration), available resources and health care, and social and environmental factors. These factors will be illustrated in detail and with examples from the perspective of environmental and man-made hazards, before we will propose solution strategies to overcome health problems in megacities.
The priority programme of the German Research Council "Megacities - Megachallenge: Informal Dynamics of Global Change" will be presented with its major aims and focus areas: 1. Material and resources flows, 2. loss of governability, 3. megaurban economies, and 4. housing and settlements, including the different research projects in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and in the Pearl River Delta, China. In the Pearl River Delta we focus on aerosols, because the aerosols determine a major threat for human health. The plan of this pilot study is to bring aerosol and health mapping together that in the future a more systematic geographical analysis of aerosol-related disease burdens can be done similar to that from WHO for Europe. In addition, results from a cross-sectional epidemiological field study from Dhaka, Bangladesh, will be presented that focus on the burden of disease and health determinants of inhabitants of marginal settlements (slums).
Bio-sketch:
Alexander Krämer studied medicine and philosophy and graduated in 1981 for the MD at the Free University of Berlin with an experimental work in the field of physiology. After his training as specialist physician internists, he took a swing to the Population Medicine and worked 4 years in the USA in the infection-epidemiological research at the National Institutes of Health, and as assistant professor in the Division of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota. Since 1994, he appointed as the Professor and Head in the School of Public Health, Department of Public Health Medicine, University of Bielefeld and was involved in the establishment of the first independent faculty for health sciences in the German-speaking countries.
Professor Krämer has genuine research interests on the following areas:
- Epidemiology of infectious diseases;
- Migrant health;
- Burden of disease: concepts and methodology;
- Health promotion at the university setting; and
- Health in megacities;
and his selected publications include:
- Mond JM, Stich H, Hay PJ, Krämer A, Baune BT. Associations between obesity and developmental functioning in pre-school children: a population-based study. International Journal of Obesity.
- El Ansari W, Maxwell AE, Mikolajczyk RT, Stock C, Naydenova V, Krämer A. Promoting Public Health: Benefits and Challenges of a europeanwide research consortium on student health. Central European Journal of Public Health. Im Druck.
- El Ansari W, Maxwell AE, Stock C, Mikolajczyk RT, Naydenova V, Krämer A. Nurses’ involvement in international research collaborations. Nursing Standard 2007;21(26):35-40.
- Stock C, Kücük N, Miseviciene I, Petkeviciene J, Krämer A. Misperceptions of body shape among university students from Germany and Lithuania. Health Education 2004;104(2):113-121.
Presentation file
Photo Gallery
|
