Combating Yellow Fever: A Serious Game
 The Safouley Republic, District of Massidou, Monday, March 3rd: A young man presenting signs of yellow fever is rushed to the district hospital. Dr Ba, District Medical Officer, must remain vigilant. If the case is confirmed, an epidemiological investigation involving expertise in epidemiology, entomology and virology will need to be carried out. Dr Ba and his team will have to determine the size of the epidemic, find a vector and create a response.
This fictional case is taken from an immersive distance training tool using serious gaming, which is now available for physicians all across Africa. The CD-ROM, produced by WHO in collaboration with the Agence de Médecine Préventive (AMP), offers the chance to play the role of the District Medical Officer, the epidemiologist or the virologist, and thus be an actor in an epidemiological investigation.
The Agence de Médecine Préventive (AMP) is an NGO that works towards bringing scientific discoveries, industrial applications and technological innovations that help to combat infectious illnesses within everyone’s reach.
In the field, AMP suggests – and contributes towards – implementing action research programmes within the area of preventive medicine, integrating their economic, institutional and governance aspects. AMP aspires to be the link between scientific, biological, technical, human and financial resources that can be mobilised at a global level and the priority needs of developing countries. Inspired by the “Millennium Development Goals” towards sustainable development, it is attempting to provide adapted responses to local health problems that affect mainly women and children. AMP implements, among other things, the SIVAC (Supporting Immunization and Vaccine Advisory Committees) initiative, which aims to facilitate, document and accompany the setting up of national vaccination committees in Africa and Asia. Financed over a period of seven years by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, this strategic project represents a new step towards aiding health development. It will enable least-developed countries to garner the skills necessary to formulate and implement the relevant policies with respect to vaccination. www.aamp.org
Cécile Duperray
Cécile Duperray works for the Agence de Médecine Préventive (AMP). She is responsible for designing teaching products for distance-training. She was involved in the design and development of a serious game, financed by the World Health Organization (WHO), as part of a training programme for health professionals facing yellow fever epidemics. Since writing her master’s dissertation on video games, Cécile Duperray says she has been convinced of the role that video games could play in a learning environment. In her opinion, video games offer a learning platform that enables teaching to reflect reality and immerses learners in an environment where they can actively participate; they are not passive and instead can take control of their own learning paths. These are the essential elements for a successful transferral of knowledge.
The serious game developed by AMP conveys educational and operational WHO recommendations and messages by presenting them in the form of an appealing and immersive situation. The fundamental aspects of an adventure game have not been lost: A narrative plot with fictional locations has been dreamt up in order to set the scene for the investigation of a simulated yellow fever epidemic; characters have been created so that the learner can embody the roles and converse with other characters; interactive educational activities have also been introduced.
“Play so that you may be serious” - Aristotle
The oxymoron associating “play” with “serious” covers all serious game IT applications, which combine both so-called serious aspects with the fun elements of a video game. There are many definitions of a serious game, but we refer to the one given by CERIMES (Multimedia Resource and Information Centre for Higher Education): “A genuine tool for training, communication and simulation purposes, the serious game is in many respects a useful extension of the video game for the benefit of professionals. Serious games are applications developed on the basis of the advanced technology of video games, (3-D real-time graphics, sound modelling, physical simulation, Artificial Intelligence, etc.), calling on the same design and expertise processes used in standard gaming but going beyond their sole entertainment aspect.”
Sources: www.educnet.education.fr/chrgt/jeux_serieux.pdf
www.jeux-serieux.fr/
This product will be available on CD-ROM and handed out to health professionals who are involved in investigations of epidemics in French and English-speaking African countries where epidemics occur. After this training tool has been in use for a set time, it will be evaluated on the basis of its educational benefits and its effect on professional conduct. Depending on the results, the serious game tool will be optimised and the idea imitated, so that this educational approach can be used in a widespread manner in other areas of learning in relation to African health issues, aiding professionals and populations alike.
AMP is the forerunner in this type of serious game development for Africa. For Cécile Duperray, this is consistent with the agency’s aim, which, among other things, is to enable populations in the South to benefit from the inventions of the North. Since these “edutainment” games are increasingly popular in the North, it seemed obvious to the agency to suggest the use of this educational method to the WHO, all the more so as, in its opinion, the subject of investigation lent itself to it perfectly. The agency states that, as an initial step, it needs feedback on this edutainment game in use and then it will proceed to an evaluation of the effects on training; if the tests are conclusive, it could be extended to other areas of disease.
More information
http://www.aamp.org/index.php?page=detailfiche&fiche=18&type=CAPmulti#
February 3, 2009
 Newsportal: eLearning and Health Education
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