Social Technology for community engagement in monitoring and fighting against epidemiological vectors and supporting decision-making by municipal managers in epidemiological control.
Current Status
The Android version of the app CLIC has been available for download from the Google Play Store since 2020. However, due to the pandemic, epidemiological control actions were completely focused on the issue of Covid-19.
Now, due to the recent explosion of Dengue cases in Brazil, we are working with public managers in the hope that CLIC can be used as an additional tool in campaigns to engage people in combating Aedes Aegypti outbreaks. We also approved a proposal to raise tax exempt funds to produce a short movie in 3D animation, in a science fiction script that aims to increase the interest of children and teenagers in using CLIC to combat mosquito outbreaks, which we hope to develop throughout this year.
Historic
The development of Vectors began in 2019 and the objective was to build an app to engage people in communities in monitoring and controlling outbreaks of epidemiological vectors, with special emphasis on Aedes Aegypti, the mosquito that causes diseases such as Dengue, Chikungunya and Zica.
The app was named CLIC (Caçadores de Lugares Infectados por Criaturas = Hunters of Places Infected by Creatures) and it was fully developed in partnership with health agents from the municipality of Santa Luzia do Itanhy and we generated 3 versions: CLIC – Community; CLIC – Endemic Diseases Agent; CLIC – Dashboard, with these last two versions being integrated into the Brazilian national health systems DataSUS and SisPNDC. CLIC – Comunity is aimed at promoting community engagement and mobilization to monitor and combat vector outbreaks, through gamification strategies. In practice, the user downloads the application and can use it to photograph and georeference vector foci, but also perform an action to destroy the focus, if possible. This action, in turn, needs to be validated by another member of the community and the app has a points and rewards system to encourage community participation. CLIC – Endemic Disease Agent is an application for use by endemic disease agents, replacing the old paper spreadsheets to support the control and monitoring of home visits. CLIC – Dashboard is a tool created to assist decision-making by public managers to more effectively combat vectors of infectious diseases. This version is integrated with various data sources, such as DataSUS, SisPNDC and CLIC – Comunidade, and generates maps and graphs that present to managers the forecast and areas of potential danger for the multiplication of vectors in the region, which enables decision-making to address the spread of vectors, with greater efficiency. To assist with community engagement, Vectors Social Technology also developed the episode “The Community Strikes Back” for the comic book “Artery Wars”, focusing on raising community awareness about vectors and the importance of collective action to prevent epidemiological diseases.