Ekologi dan Penyakit

Disease and Ecology Review

At the time being where so many things can be happened in the world, because of so many factors that have some specifics influences to the others, then there are some difficulties in the way how to understand about  disease, for instance in the way to bearing in mind about how is the right way to stop the spread of  HIV/ AIDS,  what is HIV/AIDS really?  Why, when and so on.

In Indonesia right now, where there so many problems increasing, for example :

• the Problems of pollution
• the Problems of modernizationthe Problems of westernization (Secularisation)
• the Problems of life style changing
• the Problems of Post Modernisation (Postmo life style)
• the Problems of deforestation
• the Problems of Industrialisastion
•  etc

On the other hand, the West people (not the West Government) tend to come to the East and tend to be the East people, for example :

• the Case of Back to Nature
• the Case of Expatriats who stay in Indonesia
• the Case of American’s Gamelan Players
• the Case of British’ Javanese’s Puppet show players
• etc

The World Health Organization definition is saying that illness can be happened because of the role of :

• Physical Environment
• Biological Environment
• Social Environment
• Psychosocial Environment

Then based on the above problems, what can be done to solve all of the most difficult problems in the world ? Indeed that is a very complex problem among many other problems we have faced already.

Ecology according to Hawkins (1988) is the study of organisms in relation to one another and to their surroundings. Slamet (2004) reported that Human Ecology is a science that can be used to study the specific interaction between human life (physical, mental and social) and  environment ( physical environment, biological environment, social and psychosocial environment).

Mukono (2000) made an explanation that Ecology is come from the word of :

OIKOS (home) and LOGOS (Science or study). The word of Ecology at the first time was used by Ernest Haeckel ( Deutsch Biologist) at 1869, and according to him ecology means a science that study the interactive relationship between the creature and its surroundings. The role of Ecologist is to estimate or to predict what will happen in the real life based on the general knowledge. Indeed, that is the most difficult thing to do.

According to Slamet (2004), human ecology is an essential tool to when human being want to develop more about the way to manage the environment.As an example, the human ecology actually can be used in the fields of health aspects, for instances :

• In the Preventive Medicine : by increasing the human immunity to dicrease the dysgenic factors (the bad things: human immunity)
• In the Environmental Health : to increase the Eugenic factors (the Lucky factors) and to decrease the dysgenic factors
• In the Clinical Medicine : by increasing the power of human being in order to decrease the dysgenic factors

John Last (1998) conclusion is we have made great progress in control measures during the 20th century, but we have not eliminated threats to health and long life from infectious pathogens. I doubt if we ever will, because there are so many more varieties of microorganisms than there are humans.Our best hope is to regard microorganisms in THEIR ECOLOGIC PERSPECTIVE and to work with, rather than against, the ecosystems that include humans and pathogenic organisms.

Reference: Hawkins, Joyce M 1988.THE OXFORD REFERENCE DICTIONARY, Guild Publishing, London, United Kingdom; Slamet, Juli Soemirat 2004.KESEHATAN LINGKUNGAN, Gadjah Mada University Press, Yogyakarta;Mukono, H.J 2000.PRINSIP DASAR KESEHATAN LINGKUNGAN, Airlangga University Press, Surabaya;Last,John 1998.PUBLIC HEALTH AND HUMAN ECOLOGY, Second Edition, Appleton & Lange, USA.