Space technology: a new frontier for public health.

When former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan was seen leaving a conference in Geneva in November 2005 clutching maps of the south Asia earthquake disaster, it was evidence that satellites – as a key weapon in humanitarian emergencies – had arrived. In the hours and days after the October 8 quake struck killing more than 73 000 people and injuring some 150 000, experts from France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United Nations scrambled to gather and interpret images data from satellites to assist rescue workers on the ground from local authorities to nongovernmental organizations (NGO), like Télécoms Sans Frontières. The maps (which can be seen at http://www.disasterscharter.org/ disasters/CALLID_110_e.html) compare the terrain before and after the disaster, and pinpoint the location and