Tool "The immunisation game"

Language: English

Project Featuring This Tool: Peers without Frontiers

Themes:Health

Overview: The activity explores the impact of immunisation and the impact of not having them. Starting with a simulation of how diseases can spread and how immunisation can slow this down, the activity then moves to a discussion on the wider context of reducing child mortality.

Objectives

  • To explore the impact of immunisation
  • To raise awareness of the importance of immunisation
Time 70 minutes
Approximate number of participants 10-15
Age 10-15
Date published 3 Feb 2011, 17:01

Materials

  • Score card
  • Red felt tip pens (enough for each person)
  • Black felt tip pens (enough for each person)
  • Tokens (enough for 10% of participants to have 10 each)
  • Envelopes (for everyone)

Preparation:

  • Prepare envelopes for each participant: Put a score card and a felt tip in each envelope: A red felt tip in one of the envelopes and black felt tips in all the others. Put 10 tokens each in 10% of the envelopes.
  • Set up a table at one end of the room with the sign “Health Centre” above it.

A facilitator should sit there to ‘sell’ cures and vaccines. A vaccination costs 1 token. Vaccination is only available in round 2 and 3. A cure costs 5 tokens for people without vaccination and 2 tokens for people with vaccination.

  • Copy the score cards for everyone

Step-by-step instructions

Instructions In this activity there are three rounds, each one building on the last. Don’t tell the participants about the different rounds at the start, but take the group step by step.

1.Explain that this is a game about how curable diseases can spread through populations without immunisation. 2.Explain that the aim of the game is to meet as many people as possible without being infected by them. If you are infected, you have to go to the ‘health centre’ to get cured. 3.Hand out the envelopes.

Round 1 (15 minutes) 4.Ask the participants to walk round the room. They have to meet everyone, shake each other’s hand and introduce each other. When two people meet, they put a cross on each other’s score cards with the felt tips in their envelopes. A red mark means that they are infected. If someone gets a red mark, he or she has to go to the health centre. At the health centre participants have two options:

  • They can pay to be treated if they have enough tokens to pay for a treatment. The facilitator at the health centre will tell the prices of a treatment.
  • If they don’t get treated, their black felt-tip will be swapped for a red one. With the red felt tip they will infect people they meet.

5.This is repeated until everyone has had enough time to meet everyone else. 6.Ask who got infected. Did anyone manage to avoid being infected?

7.Take in all the tokens and re-issue them back to 10% of the people (again 10 tokens each for 10% of the group). Everyone gets back their black pen apart from one person, who at random should only get a red one.

Round two (15 minutes) 8.The rules are the same as in round 1, but people can buy vaccinations. Vaccinated people don’t get ill unless they have three red marks on their score card. The vaccine reduces the cost of treatment from 5 to 2 tokens. 9.The health centre marks the score cards of the vaccinated people with ‘vaccinated’. 10.Play the game until everyone has met everybody. 11.Ask who got infected and who was vaccinated. 12.Take in all the tokens and re-issue them back to 10% of the people (10 tokens each). Take in all pens. Everyone gets back their black pen apart from one person, who at random should get a red one.

Round Three (20 minutes) 13.Ask the group to get together. The task is now to get as few infections as possible. 14.Ask the group to work out a way to reduce the infection rate for everyone. 15.Play until everyone has had enough time to meet everyone else again.

Debriefing

  • How many people were infected in the final round?
  • What happened to the disease in round one, two and three?
  • Which was the best way to get rid of the disease?
  • How did people feel when they couldn’t get treated?
  • What happens in their homes when they get ill?
  • What do they think happens to children from places where health care is not free?

Today many people cannot get vaccinated because they don’t have the money for it. Remember that while large numbers of people aren’t vaccinated, it also puts at risk those who are. The vaccine isn’t perfect; it just makes it easier for the body to fight the infection.

  • What do you think we could do to make sure that everyone in the world gets access to vaccines?

Attached files