ZIKA: A gamified m-training app for health professional

Dengue epidemics have been considered major public health concerns since the middle of the last century. Due to climate change and increased air travel, two new arboviruses became endemic in the Americas: Chikungunya and the recent deadly outbreak of Zika. 

Prevention of arboviruses depends on prioritizing the elimination of the vector: Aedes aegypti foci. This requires active cooperation of the government and healthcare agencies in executing disease control strategies and increasing awareness in the general population. In Brazil, local community environmental health workers (CHW) volunteers deliver care alongside professional healthcare workers, but are often overlooked for engagement and training. 

In this project, we co-authored and developed a gamified mobile app to engage community health workers in new methods for mobile phone surveillance protocols using participatory mapping of Aedes aegypti foci, in order to supply a geographical information to policy makers at municipality and regional and national levels. Secondly, using climatic and weather data we are developing an early warning now-casting model to predict the mosquito population. 

Utilising the growing coverage of mobile technology in Brazil, m-training using gamification empowers community environmental healthcare workers, disseminates easy-to-use surveillance protocols to engage healthcare workers in participatory surveillance methods to fight Aedes aegypti foci, and pre-diagnose Dengue fever, Chikungunya fever, and Zika arboviruses; and provides the data for calibrating the forecasting model. The project is implemented in the cities: Recife, Olinda and Campina Grande.