The Risk Perception in the Prevention of Epidemics: Activities to be Implemented at School

Abstract

At present, the world population is facing the pandemic caused by COVID-19, which has caused loss of human lives in different nations. In Cuba, this situation has had another connotation, due to the particularities of the Cuban health system and the strategy designed to stop the epidemic and minimize its effects on the population. However, despite of the efforts made and the measures adopted, this epidemic continues in the country and coexists with others such as Cholera, HIV / AIDS, Influenza A (H1N1) and with other epidemic events of vector transmission: dengue, Zika and chikungunya. This work is accredited to the National Project Improvement of Environmental Education for Sustainable Development and in particular, to Task: Introduction and validation of the proposal of the Biological Diversity Subprogram for the National Education System, as well as to the Education of the risk perception of epidemics. It proposes activities to be implemented in basic secondary school to raise the risk perception of adolescents in order to minimize the main impacts and effects of epidemics on individual and collective health, aimed at characterizing the causal agents of epidemics that have affected the Cuban population, the epidemic events of vector transmission that cause epidemics, as well as arguing the risk factors, the measures to prevent them and assessing the perception of risk in the prevention of epidemics as a current emergency.