New Malaria Game

[Daniel Drake]

On 3 June 2010 13:45, World Class Project- Dev Team
<develop at worldclassproject.org.uk> wrote:
> Dear Developers,
>
> We have just uploaded an activity that teaches children about
> Malaria.
>
> http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/search?q=malaria&cat=all
>
> The Free From Malaria game tells the story of Paul, a boy who lives in a
> Malaria
> endemic country. Paul learns how mosquitoes are responsible for spreading
> the
> Plasmodium parasite which causes Malaria. He also learns how to recognize
> the
> symptoms it causes and to seek medical help if someone thinks they have the
> disease.
>
> The content consists of a comic story with two games that teaches children
> the
> importance of covering up at night-time and using bed nets. The goal is to
> help
> children recognize their role in the prevention of the disease and to create
> a
> future free from Malaria.
>
> The application is developed in PyGame using the olpcgames wrapper.We would
> be
> grateful for some beta testers and reviewers. I have tested it on an XO-1
> but
> would be grateful for tests with other versions of Sugar etc.

I haven't tried the activity yet, but this sounds like a great
project. Malaria is a huge issue in many OLPC target zones.

It would be great to also educate about the importance of avoiding
still water (a breeding site for mosquitos). I've spent a fair amount
of time on various visits to the countryside in latin america, where
Malaria isn't such an issue but rather Dengue, also transmitted by
mosquitos, and it surprises me to see so little effort in covering up
water containers, etc.

An interesting future project might be an alternative version to
educate about dengue, or perhaps an all-in-one activity which covers a
range of mosquito-transmitted diseases.

Also, more ideas can be borrowed from
http://www.seed.slb.com/uploadedFiles/Science/Features/Health_and_Safety/Malaria/anim_prevention/en/index.html?width=740&height=570&popup=true
We demo'd this game in Nigeria and the kids were dying to play it.

> I haven't created a git repo yet but will be happy to do so as required.

This is always a good idea. It is also one of the steps in adding your
project to pootle, allowing the community to contribute translations
with ease. Not many large OLPC deployments are done in
English-speaking countries.

Out of curiosity, who is behind this project? An organization/university?

Thanks,
Daniel