ICATE: infection control awareness through education

Abstract

Background: Education should be understood and used as a tool for social transformation, and as a resource to achieve social, cultural and economic equality. Therefore, ICATE is a project addressed to lower-income countries and/or rural communities that brings together universities, hospitals, schools and the local communities creating collaborative learning communities (CLC) to improve infection control. Methods & Materials: Infection Control Awareness Through Education (ICATE) is an educational project for children, teachers and health professionals that directly tackles both: three of the eight Millennium Development Goals: (i) to help achieve universal primary education, (ii) combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, and (iii) to create a global partnership for development; and two of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals: (i) ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages, and (ii) ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. ICATE tackled these issues through a multidisciplinary team of clinicians, biologists, microbiologists and anthropologists that provided the scientific knowledge to elaborate resources, namely books, eBooks, informative flyers, and to organize courses, workshops for children, educators and general population. Results: ICATE was already implemented in Brazil impacting on teachers and children. After its implementation a partnership for development was created to exponentiate the impact of this project. Conclusion: Across African and South American countries, three major issues raise the need for awareness: HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis. ICATE takes advantage of the CLC to facilitate the transfer of knowledge and educational expertise from the academic media to schools, hospitals and general community, empowering the population with a set of tools, which will allow them to deal and/or participate in the infection control more pro-actively.