The Political Ecology of Disease As One New Focus for Medical Geography

此文的主要目的是对梅尔博士《医学地理学的新焦点——疾病的政治生态》这篇文章的介绍和分析。文末作者发出疑问：“如果新方法与其他方法混合,结果会如何?将改善结果吗?”

The paper “The political ecology of disease as one new focus for medical geography” shows us a new approach to analyze medical geography. Before explaining the political ecology, the paper first gives some introduction about the contextual understanding. Then a brief analysis about the current status of medical geography is induced. After that, the author gives some introductions about the links and the differences lying in the three terms “Disease, politics and power”. Then the political ecology is induced and the author sees it as a new approach to research on disease geography. When it comes to this new approach, the paper uses one part to introduce it. And then in the following part, the paper gives a framework for the political ecology of disease. In order to show the rationality of this new approach, the paper gives an example with the new approach used to analyze the disease geography. This is the way that the author Dr. Mayer believes we should investigate health and disease. 
The next part will show the interactions between political, social and ecological factors which will have an effect on the outcome of health and disease. Political factors will affect the distribution and diffusion by disease ecologies. The political factors will contribute to an increase in disease. But the political factor is contained in social factor and the former is one of the social factor. And meanwhile the ecological factor is the collateral factor with social factor. For instance, in an economic depression time, the social life may be trapped into low ebb. Some topics about health and disease will appear in society. Due to the economic depression, the medical care for the public will be weakened and the common people will throw less money and fewer efforts into their health. And what is worse, at this time, due to the lack of efficient political strategy for the disease, the spread of disease will be stronger than before. So the social factor and the political factor accelerate the spread of the disease and will increase the disease. But when it comes to the ecological factor which is collateral to the social factor, it is easy to think of that the disease may be caused by the ecological factor. However, some cases also implies the ecological factors can also reduce disease. If the bad effect due to ecological factors, it is easy to realize the result that the ecological factor also increase the disease. 
In the paragraphs above, we mention a concept “geography”. At the first sight of this word, what we may think of may be the planet, the location, the hills and so on. In this paper, what the concept “geography” means is that it is the locational tradition of positivistic geography. From the meaning of the word “geography”, it is gotten in the narrow sight about “geography”. Due to the disease geography, we will understand the meaning of the word easily. But in the paper “The political ecology of disease as one new focus for medical geography”, the author integrates the place or space with the scale to explain the word “geography”. In a brief, the author thinks that the disease can appear in some areas which refer to the space of “geography”. Though the disease appears in this area, the scale of the place is not clear which refers to the scale. For instance, a disease may appear in a town. A countryside may get the bad effect caused by the disease worse. While the other countryside in the town doesn’t get the bad effect. In the view of the space, we know the town gets the harmful effect. While in the view of the scale, the scale of disease is not the whole town. So the author explains the two concepts about the geography in the paper and integrates them as the two sides of geography. If the geography matter is studied, the research on health and illness will become easier. Why? As is known to all, the disease spreads in the country which does not mean all the places are trapped into this disease. So the relevant people need to evaluate the geography of the illness or the health. If the studies about the geography of the illness or the health, some specific strategy will be given to some places. So it is vital to do research on it. 
The paper “The political ecology of disease as one new focus for medical geography” provides a new approach to the medical geography. The author does not mention the approach at first in detail. What he does is to overview the common approach about medical geography. And meanwhile, the author points out some problems lying in the common approach. Then the author uses the left space to analyze the new approach and gives some examples to perfect the new approach. At last, a brief conclusion is given and I support his idea. Because I think it is true of disease ecology and political ecology. Besides, I like the way the author shows his idea about this topic. After reading it, what I leave is the structure of the article which is well designed. 
To sum up, the paper first gives some introductions about the given article. Some details about this article are given. Then the paper explains some concepts in the article which confuse the public at the first sight of them. Besides, some thoughts about the paper are given at the end of the paper. The given article shows the new approach to the medical geography. But I have question: if the new approach mixes with other methods, how will the results be? Will any improvement in the result?