Infection Medicine at the Edinburgh Science Festival
Disease Detectives is an interactive workshop to highlight how infectious diseases are transmitted, how to detect and identify them, and how to choose successful therapy options to reduce the risk of generating resistant mutants.
As part of the University of Edinburgh’s contribution to this year's Edinburgh Science Festival, Infection Medicine volunteers led by Dr Richard Sloan, Dr Samantha Griffiths and Nelly Mak developed and ran an interactive workshop "Disease Detectives" at the National Museum of Scotland on Monday 11th April 2022.
The workshop consisted of activities including Disease Transmission, Disease Diagnosis and Disease Treatment. A total of 31 children took part in this 1-hour workshop to explore how different infections spread, how we can identify the culprit, and how to then treat the illness.
When Dr Samantha Griffith was asked why Infection Medicine chose to develop this workshop and how it was received by the participants, she said:
Since the COVID19 pandemic, overall public awareness of Infectious Diseases has never been higher. We felt it was important to capitalise on this, and deepen public understanding of infectious diseases beyond COVID19. As a Department, Infection Medicine is ideally positioned to share our research and knowledge on factors affecting disease transmission, spread, treatment, and diagnosis. Our workshop at ESF2022 offered an insight into how diseases are spread, but also introduced our younger generations to the concept of different pathogens, how we can differentiate between them, how we can treat them and most importantly, what scientists like us are doing to help fight them.
The kids responded really well to the activities – they were really engaged, entertained, and actually really knowledgeable about a lot of the things we were talking about. It was just fantastic to see so many of them as fascinated by bugs and germs as we are!
What did the participants say?
The participants said that they have learned a lot about microorganisms and how diseases spread. Here are some of the comments:
"I really enjoyed it. I loved doing the science bits. I’ll see you (at the science festival) next year!"
"Good, simple explanations; Very good!"
"Great fun for all, very well put together."
"Very good! Highly recommend! Thank you."