page_title: Mohamed Zaazoue
section_title: Healthy Egyptians
hierarchical_section_title: Mohamed Zaazoue / Public health work / Healthy Egyptians
caption_attribution_description: English: Portable Child Cinema created by Healthy Egyptians to roam the country and screen its health educational cartoon Montasser Overcomes Pneumonia.
context_page_description: Mohamed A. Zaazoue is a specialist neurosurgeon, a social entrepreneur and currently, a post-doctoral research fellow at the pediatric neurosurgery department of Boston Children's Hospital.
  He is the founder of Healthy Egyptians, a non-profit, non-governmental organisation in Egypt, which aims at spreading health awareness and preventive medicine in Africa through the utilization of non-conventional methods.
  An Ashoka fellow, he was chosen for the Forbes 30 Under 30 influential people in the world list in 2014. He has given a number of talks at TEDx Cairo, Harvard School of Public Health, Clinton Global Initiative University, Middle East Institute, Population Council, many Egyptian universities and NGOs.
context_section_description: As the founding president of Healthy Egyptians, Zaazoue focuses on integrating technology and art in his health awareness messages.
  One of the organisation's projects, Protect Your Child, was focused on creating a healthcare icon that would resonate with the young audience and their families. The project created a cartoon character called "Montasser" (Arabic word for 'victorious') who goes about his daily life in school, at home, on the street or in the club and has different encounters with infectious organisms and bad health habits. With the help of his doctor friend and his lab of special scientific tools, he combats these organisms and saves his fellow friends and family from the diseases. The organisms included in each story have easy and funny names, but are always derived from the proper scientific name of the causative organism. For example, in a story about pneumonia, the "evil characters" are named Hemo and Nemo, which are the cartoon names for Hemophilus influenzae and Streptococcus pneumoniae, the two most common causative organisms of pneumonia worldwide.
  The concept of Montasser was first applied in a comic book called Montasser Overcomes, which was later turned into a coloring comic book with a complementary set of coloring crayons. To increase the interest of Montasser's audience, the story was transformed into puppet shows. After creating Montasser Overcomes: Pneumonia, Montasser Overcomes: Gastroenteritis, Montasser Overcomes: Iron Deficiency Anemia, and Montasser Overcomes: Rheumatic Heart Disease, Healthy Egyptians created a high-quality 3-D cartoon of Montasser Overcomes: Pneumonia. The cartoon was aired on satellite and Egyptian television and screened in outpatient clinics, schools, nurseries, social clubs and shopping malls.
  To reach remote areas where access to the Internet or television is not easy, Healthy Egyptians created a Portable Child Cinema, which roamed the country and screened the cartoon to children in different places.
  The work he did as part of Healthy Egyptians was featured in the Financial Times, BBC, Reuters and Al Jazeera.
caption: The Portable Child Cinema that was carried on a truck to roam the country and reach remote areas with limited access to facilities.
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