Monitoring of epidemics is a main issue in Public Healthcare. Over the last years, the Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) in France has specifically studied the connections between climate and health in the framework of its satellite-based applications to health program. In fact, satellites can provide a valuable assistance in the field of disease surveillance, since they allow effective access to communications throughout the world, irrespective of the prevailing conditions. Satellites can also provide ecological data collected from tele-detection; the association of this information with epidemiology and climate records referred to a given location allows to define predictive models on the outbreak and spread dynamics of epidemics.

In this context, the Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) has entered a cooperation agreement with the Institut Pasteur, the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) , and the École Nationale Vétérinaire de Lyon , for the creation of the Consortium S2E for Space Surveillance of Epidemics.

In turn, the Argentine Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE) and the Ministry of Health are jointly developing a project for space surveillance of epidemics targeting five different types of illnesses, i.e. leishmaniasis, dengue, malaria, Argentine hemorrhagic fever and hantavirus.

The French contribution to this project is focused on the control of dengue in Argentina, where French and Argentine scientists have the chance to work on a cooperation basis.

These cooperation activities fit into the framework of an agreement entered between the French and the Argentine space agencies, respectively the CNES and the CONAE, moved by the wish of seeking new applications for satellite-based technologies like earth observing, tele-communication, and data acquisition, in order to provide for public needs in the field of health.