Géographe • Afrique du Sud
Les immenses étendues de banquise et de calotte, leur beauté indescriptible et le silence de l’Antarctique sont ma drogue
Ian Meiklejohn is Professor and Head the Department of Geography at Rhodes University in South Africa. He is Principle Investigator of a project titled “Landscape Processes in Antarctic Ecosystems” run in the South African National Antarctic Programme and funded by the National Research Foundation. His research was previously on the deterioration of indigenous rock art in southern Africa, but now focusses on Geomorphology and environmental change and the interactions between landscapes and biota in the Antarctic and Sub-Antarctic.
The poles have always attracted the brave and the strong spirit people. They wanted to test their abilities and experience the joy of knowing the unknown. Only a few brave people have a high level of motivation to conquer the extreme Arctic and Antarctic territories. This is proven by historical facts that Russian, British, Americans, Norwegians, Germans, French, Ukrainians and many others participated in the development of poles. Currently, Antarctica has become a major international research testing ground with the prospects of practical benefit to mankind. Nowadays it is rapidly increasing number of different kinds of professionals who perform professional tasks in the Antarctic. As a result, a lot of participants may not have ideal indicators of health in the Antarctic expeditions. Therefore, there is at least two points, which is important for health maintenance organization of temporary residents in Antarctica. Firstly, the motivation to stay in the Antarctic became multimodal and secondly, the influence of extreme factors is not always result in adequate adaptive responses of the body and further increases the risk of various diseases. For this reason, the actual problem of modern Antarctic exploration is an efficient international health system of Antarctic operations. Such a system requires the development of improved medical screening methods, medical and physiological training, special psychological training, increasing adaptive capacity, prevention of adaptation disorders and rehabilitation. It is important to take into account the geographical position and environment, as part of the environmental factors which negatively affecting on the individual and depends on the terrain.