Remote sensing and GIS investigations of bartonellosis in Peru

As part of a larger on-going investigation to study the disease bartonellosis, remote sensing images are being used to map the study area and to help determine environmental factors that may influence the abundance of sand flies, the insect thought to be the vector of the disease. A plot of positive patient houses on a Landsat image shows that most of the cases occur in the agricultural areas and few cases occur in the town. The disease does not occur more frequently near the river. One of the classes produced from an unsupervised classification of a Landsat image occurs frequently with the positive houses and infrequently with the negative houses. Additional positive and negative houses are needed to confirm this result and future studies will attempt to determine what environmental factors are represented by the class and how these factors might relate to sand fly distribution.