Since the pandemic started, we have all, children and adults, become well aware of the need to look after our health, our most precious asset. We have also confirmed that emotions can have a positive or negative impact on our wellbeing and we have understood more thoroughly how vaccines can alter the course of an infectious disease outbreak. These are the main topics of the new campaign run by the Education Department of FIDEC and FUNCEI, entitled El Sistema Inmunológico y el Poder de las Vacunas (The Immune System and the Power of Vaccines). It is supported by GlaxoSmithKline.
“We believe that we can turn the current situation into an opportunity to teach children about the immune system. Although they often hear about it, most children do not really know what it is or does. Neither are they aware of the commitment they have to make to grow healthy,” explained Cristina Stamboulian, Teacher and Director of the Education Department. This and every other project FUNCEI aims at school communities share a deep conviction that childhood is a key stage to promote healthy habits, since those acquired at an early age are more likely to persist into adulthood.
The campaign started in June and is aimed at 1,500 4th and 5th graders attending schools in the City of Buenos Aires, its metropolitan area, and the province of Jujuy. Moreover, it has reached family support centers in the City of Buenos Aires. To launch the campaign, doctor Hebe Vázquez, Vaccine and Infectious Disease specialist at FUNCEI and FIDEC, gave an educational talk covering health topics for families, teachers, and school authorities.
In July, teachers received the first part of the educational material prepared for the campaign, essentially in audiovisual format: the videos “Los microbios y el sistema inmunológico” (Microbes and the Immune System) and “Ganar la batalla al coronavirus, ¿misión posible?” (Winning the Battle against Coronavirus. A Possible Mission?), both made by FUNCEI. Play-based learning activities are also included to implement at school, in a practical and fun way, the new concepts learnt from the videos
Videos included in the educational material provided during FUNCEI’s campaign.
These activities are a complement to the campaign core learning tool: the book entitled Los defensores de nuestra salud (Bodyguards of our Health). Recently published by the Educational Department, it is freely distributed to all campaign students. “By means of various child-oriented resources, the contents introduce knowledge of the immune system, its main defense functions, and the importance of vaccination and self-care,” stated Cynthia Elmassian, the book author and Coordinator of Educational Programs at the Department. This book thus deals with several topics, for instance, the microscopic world, composed of useful and harmful microbes whose characteristics and classification are described, and multiple defense barriers of the body. An analogy is used to present disease-causing microbes as “villains” and body defenses as “superheroes”.
Front cover and inner pages of FUNCEI’s new book for children.
FUNCEI’s staff also created a fun comic to “travel” inside the human body, “meet” the different components of the immune system, and learn how they protect the body. The importance of vaccination is addressed, on one side, by explaining what vaccines are, how they are manufactured, and why they are effective enough to be allies of the immune system, and on the other side, by recalling previous epidemics and pandemics effectively controlled with vaccines. Along this line, the book contents then move on to the virus that causes COVID-19, the measures to prevent spreading, and the relevance of scientists’ work, which enabled rapid development of vaccines to manage a sanitary crisis once again. Finally, as Elmassian stated, “the book motivates campaign participants to become ‘superheroes’ that protect their own body and discover their power to complete five missions that will help them look after their health and promote their own physical, emotional, and social wellbeing.”