ISSN 2239-978X Journal of Educational and Social Research Vol. 3 (5) August 2013 109 Medical Geography in Egypt: As an Interdisciplinary Subfield Mohamed Nour Eldin Ibrahim Elsabawy Professor of Medical Geography Faculty of Arts, Minia University, Minia ,Egypt. Doi:10.5901/jesr.2013.v3n5p109 1. Introduction Medical geography studies geographical factors concerned with cause and effect of health and disease. So its task not to study diseases only, but places affected with such maladies, and not studies health only but Areal differentiations in health Care patterns. This paper aims to study the importance of medical geography as an interdisciplinary sub- discipline or subfield in Human and Social geography and attempt to follow up, analyze and classify studies of Medical geography in Egypt, since the existence of that branch in the beginning of 1980s to 2010, to observe the development of these studies. This development undoubtedly is necessary because the concept, terrain, and the range of this subfield were not understandable in the beginning of studies. So, many researchers preferred choosing general topics in the first time. Gradually, they have been concentrating, deliberating on subjects related to some diseases which correlate to Egyptian geographical environment. Explicitly, we can decide that the studies of medical geography in Egypt seem to be more general and more comprehensive especially in the period from 1986 until 1996. Thereafter till 2010, studies have dealt with specific topics and new methods and materials of Medical Geography. Medical Geography as a subfield depending upon many systems, polices and Sciences e.g. medicine, engineering, soil, Geology, Biology, Economy, Politics, History, and psychology. Etc. The main approaches of medical geography depends upon many trends and attitudes, the first approach called “disease diffusion”, which differ from site to site as a cause of climatic factors e.g. temperature, humidity, winds, relief and topography, and other human causes. The second approach “Disease pattern”, includes endemic, epidemic and pandemic diseases in micro and macro scale in the world, and studies spatial and areal differentiations. The third approach “Medical cartography” devoted to the distribution of diseases and health services, by using GIS and other advanced techniques. Mapping plays a crucial role in the history of medical geography literature, when physicians started to study and draw maps firstly. It was created to show historic outbreaks of diseases like Cholera in Broad Street, London 1835, then global influenza pandemic 1918, and Cholera epidemic in Egypt 1947, for example. The fourth approach “Ethno medicine and medical pluralism” which covers integration between traditional and modern medicine, in this context medical geography concentrates upon spatial variations between rural and urban behavior of the population, The fifth approach “Health care” which deals with planning health systems in different states. So such analysis should be done with the assistance of equations and mathematical methods such as gravity model, neighborhood analysis, and weight mean centers. The Sixth approach “Nutritional geography” which deals with the study of deprivation and hungry places, poverty zones, and through distribution of calories intake between human groups. The seventh approach “Associative relatives” which deals with statistical analysis using advanced indices such as factor analysis, correlation coefficient, standard deviations, analysis of variance and prediction measurements in health care and disease.