Hello and welcome in this new MOOC on Zika. This MOOC will be yours, you will be in front of an emergency, which is a real problem that has not been solved as we are making this MOOC. So this MOOC will be yours, because you will build it with us. The story of Zika and the story of the fight against Zika you will see it's devastating, it's something which sometimes is very mild, and something which is a disease of very severe complications. This MOOC has been produced and thought with a consortium of Universities gathering a lot of specialists from a lot of disciplines. The University of Geneva, the Institute Pasteur and the University of Sorbonne Paris City so called center Virchow-Villermé, is proposing you a MOOC where you will find a lot of problems which will be explained, sometimes controversies, sometimes consensus, sometimes discrepancies, and you will form your own ideas and opinions, and you will find a lot of ressources, a lot of facts, a lot of videos of experts, worldwide experts, you may speak French, English, Spanish or Portuguese, this MOOC is yours. From October 2013 to April 2014, French Polynesia experienced what was, at that time, the largest ever documented of Zika outbreak in the world. During these 6 months, more than 30000 clinical cases were documented. Most of them where asymptomatic or had very little symptoms. Still, at the "centre hospitalier de Polynésie Française" clinicians and particularly neurologists noticed an unusual increased of Guillain Barré (GB) syndrome. What are GB syndromes ? These are paralysis, starting in the lower limbs, going up, and at a certain point, the patients can no longer breathe because the muscles of their chest no longer function. They have to be moved to intensive care unit, it's a very severe complication. The virus disappeared, and then reemerged one year later in Latin America. This time, it was not GB syndrome that attracted the attention, but the occurrence of microcephaly, small heads, in babies born to women who had got infected by Zika during their pregnancy. In mid-November 2015, the Brazilian Ministry of Health alerted the WHO in saying that they saw an incredible increase in the number of this rare neurological complication in babies being born in the north eastern part of Brazil, where the epidemic was raging. On February 1st 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO), declared those complications, the clusters of microcephaly and GB syndrome, as a public health emergency of international concern. They urge governments and countries to get organized for the surveillance of these two complications, and the scientific community to work and try to confirm the putative link between the Zika virus and these two complications. Since, it has been confirmed, that indeed Zika virus is responsible for, in adults, those neurological complications as paralysis, and in children, the microcephaly and other neurological congenital malformations. At the end of April 2016, we had the chance to welcome in Paris the firt international Zika summit at Institut Pasteur, more than 600 scientists from all over the world gathered to listen to experts, and we went to interview those experts, so that they could share with you their knowledge and recommendations on how best to fight against this new emerging virus. Even so mapping the distribution of Aedes, mosquitoes across the world, and the distribution of the transmission of pathogen, virus replication and the distribution of infected people, are essential for public health planning, an ecosystem overview, based on an interdisciplinary approach, is critical to better understand the current Zika outbreak and to be able to predict what could happen in the near future. Indeed the Zika phenomenon affects every single facet of our society, and we are all directly or indirectly exposed or affected by this current Zika phenomenon. Interdisciplinary approach incorporates different methods of different disciplines with different partners, researchers, policy makers and stakeholders, in different contexts, in terms of politics in terms of geography, in terms of time as well, and at different scales and dimensions. All of these do address different questions, but at the end, the different questions and the different responses will combine together and will give us the big picture of what's going on with the Zika phenomenon. So an interdisciplinary approach, how does it work ? It's like putting every little piece of a puzzle all together. So it's like mapping and emerging many disciplines. Such as social science, virology, entomology, climatology, new technology behind diagnosis and treatment, politics, medias, environmental issues, abortion politics, Olympic games, so many facet so many ingredients that take into account the emergence and the possible expansion of Zika. The challenge of this learning and interdisciplinary approach is not only to find a balance between the complexity of the Zika phenomenon and as well its uniqueness, it's also to be able to adapt and to accept that we are in an iterative process of learning with different partners in different areas in different countries and everything evolving with time and knowledge, step by step. This often brings, researchers, policy makers, stakeholders, any person of this MOOC, to go beyond their comfort zone, to uncharted territories, to unexplored territories, to bring you, to bring us to new ideas and to try to attend the unknown about the Zika phenomenon. Consider to make a MOOC on Zika requires for us to answer quickly three questions according to the epidemic context at the beginning of 2016. For whom ? With who ? And How ? Why ? My colleagues, co-responsible of this MOOC, have fully answered this question. For our part, as obstetrician, we are very worried about risks on the foetus brain, and obstetrician as well as patients, pregnant women, have a fear linked to that outbreak. And it's our duty to help them to understand this phenomenon. The purpose of MOOCs is to reach two audiences : a professional one and the public at large. That is the reason why we chose that method for this teaching. What experts are chosen ? We chose internationally known experts who have explored those subjects and whose knowledge is as factual as possible. So how to set up this MOOC ? That depended on three facts : the type of informations, the audience, and the issues. As informations in this field can be very complex, it seemed better for us to do short interviews, one would understand more easily, especially for the public at large. About issues, the subject was not only to teach but also to share our experiences, our practices, our knowledge through a platform of knowledge. We proposed an educational model including several elements. Primarily, eight teaching units which scan all aspects of Zika virus infection : Zika virus, pathogenesis, epidemiology, clinical symptoms, complications, prevention, treatment, but also a more ethical dimension and maybe althought the impact of information and media in that field. The second point is the access to additional ressources. If participants wish to have educational tools or additional practice, web-link for further informations, all of that is included. A discussion group which allows exchanges between people. So we have an exchange platform which allows each person to share his or hers experience, bring contribution that can be personal work or ressources they have discovered or even put in place. Finally, there have some quiz that permits to test ones knowledge and for those who wish it, there is a possibility of certification on the condition that they participate to the whole teaching, to quiz, and if they bring a contribution, a sharing of knowledge with the all community.
