Virtual Medical Training in Lodja, DR-Congo

In November, 2021, all universities in the DR-Congo with pre-med programs were told that unless they could certify the qualifications of their faculty and unless they had a functioning clinic, their programs were suspended. This suspension affected thousands of students throughout the country, who were told to find another place to study. Lodja is very poor, so only a handful of students at the University of Science and Technology had enough money to re-locate. Those left behind simply lost the three years of study they had  finished, and their career options were drastically reduced. Those who were able to re-locate did so, but left their families in Lodja.

The university already had a problem with getting qualified professors to teach there, inasmuch as it's in an isolated region accessible from other areas only via plane or very long trips by truck and barge. When funds allowed, USTL would fly designated professors from Kinshasa to Lodja and house them for a week while they taught classes. However. available funds were contingent on paid tuition, and only a fraction of students in Lodja can afford the full tuition of $300./year. Students pay what they can, but the expense of transporting professors has become prohibitive. Doctors from regional hospitals give lectures, but qualified faculty are rare. The cost of each roundtrip flight for the professors is $800., which is not currently affordable for the university.

Additionally, the teaching style is antiquated. Professors write material on the board and students copy. Sometimes, handouts are made available for test preparation. However, once the professors leave, they are not accessible for consultation, so students can only review their notes and the handouts. 

The situation is critical at the moment because the pre-med program has been summarily cancelled. Though the university had already begun building a medical clinic on its ample acreage, the problems inherent in transporting professors and having students receive excellent instruction is too much to surmount without an innovation.

The suspension of the pre-med track at USTL happened in October, 2021, with a clarifying statement added by the government in November 2021. 150 students were abruptly stripped of the credits they had already earned unless they could afford to attend another university with a medical track in place.

Furthermore, special medical procedures in Lodja require special training, which has heretofore been done by transporting a doctor with such training from another area, such as Goma. Fistula repair, for example, is needed in Lodja and surrounding areas, but doctors require special training. In the past, doctors have been flown to Goma for training, or a doctor from Goma has been flown to Lodja to perform the operations. A Swiss organization has augmented training in a specialized hospital, but the poorest of the area still go to the General Hospital for help. One doctor at the Lodja General Hospital received training in Goma, but he has since left Lodja to pursue wider choices in Kinshasa. Because of its isolation, Lodja and its surrounding villages provide narrow options. 

We already have two RACHEL units in Lodja and will purchase four more to accommodate all students. We will also supply these students with either Chromebooks or mobile devices which will connect them to the RACHEL to access medical training. The rechargeable RACHEL is a contained hotspot which can go into any area, regardless of electrical connection. In addition, our partner organization, Community Development Network is ready to pilot  5G CDN servers which have the RACHEL software on the Raspberry Pi quad core computer (It's smaller, faster and more durable in African settings). (This version has an aluminum case without a moveable disk so it's stronger and safer with a changeable micro SD which can be easily updated without needing to sync with the internet.)

Bimpa Production will film lectures and lab demonstrations with certified medical professors in Kinshasa, DRC, which will be uploaded to the RACHELs so that students in any rural area may participate in medical training. Note that medical training is already available online in English from places like Harvard University (https://onlinelearning.hms.har...). 

A student will connect to the curriculum using the RACHEL hub (to be supplemented by the previously described technology). Each RACHEL makes curriculum available to as many as fifty students at a time, which meets the needs of the typical classroom at the university. Laboratory demonstrations will also be filmed, and students will be required to participate in virtual AND in-person laboratory demonstrations. 

Furthermore, specialized training which has heretofore required costly trips either for doctors or students may be done via film and practiced in the clinic. The films may, of course, be replayed as often as needed until the student is certain of understanding. This option  improves the teaching model currently used.

Evaluations will be done according to accepted systems currently in place in the DRC, and may be administered by local doctors.

In this way, we bring a rural area in the DR-Congo into the twenty-first century and allow the progress of digital education to reach the most vulnerable populations not only in the DR-Congo but in other countries with similar issues.

With all of this in place, USTL can have not only a pre-med program but a full medical school accessible to anyone in the area, which has a population of about 700,000. It will include the specialized training required by the particular needs of the area, such as fistula repair, and the diseases common to the area--Tuberculosis, HIV-AIDS, malaria, and typhoid.

Lodja suffered enormously during COVID-19. Because transportation to Lodja is primarily via air, businesses, schools, and neighborhoods suffered when air transport was suspended during the pandemic. Though some supplies could arrive via truck and barge, most could not. University dorms which did not yet have roofs were damaged when trees grew in the interiors, rendering them uninhabitable. The plan for housing villagers who wanted to pursue education had to be suspended until repairs were made--which has not yet happened. Furthermore, professors who were being flown from Kinshasa to Lodja to give instruction were unable to travel, and thus medical training was turned over to available personnel, who were not always qualified to teach.

The state mandate that universities with pre-medical training cancel their programs unless they had qualified professors and on-campus clinics hit USTL (Lodja) hard, and 150 students were left with wasted years of education.

Our solution makes lectures and medical demonstrations accessible via the RACHEL and Raspberry Pi, connected to Chromebooks or mobile devices. It cancels the need to transport professors from distant cities. As students resume their studies, they become contributing members of Lodja society. Many exchange work for tuition and so can be employed rebuilding the dorms.

This project will immediately help 150 students who lost their educational opportunities. These students, re-admitted, will help rebuild the dorms as part of their tuition. When the forty dorms are re-built, 160 students from the distant (and poorer) villages will have housing. (They must have housing in order to continue their education, since their villages are hundreds of kilometers away from Lodja.) Thus we see the ripple effect, which will continue as more villagers come to USTL and a medical clinic is completed.

The technology we will be using for pre-med studies will also work for literacy training, preparation for entrepreneurships, and instructional films in other subjects. All of these materials are already uploaded on the RACHELs in Lodja. 

Since the university also includes a program in IT, students pursuing technology can be employed to upgrade and maintain the various devices and to assist students in designing curriculum. With Open Educational Resources available from organizations such as Creative Commons (https://creativecommons.org/), with which we work, the possibilities are endless.

Representatives of Congo Rising Corporation were in Lodja after the announcement that pre-med programs at universities without certified professors and clinics were disbanded. They were already aware of the university's financial straits and that travel expenses for bringing in professors were prohibitive. Congo Rising representatives had brought a RACHEL (www.worldsolutions.org), an information hub which allows as many as fifty users to connect to curriculum, courses, and films through limited wifi.  Even without sustainable power, as long as the RACHEL and the mobile devices are charged, the connection to the information hub is easy to access. Entire courses can be stored in the hub.

Upon further consideration, Congo Rising partnered with Bimpa Production (Kinshasa) to film lectures and demonstrations for future medical training, and with Community Development Network, an organization which opens access to digital learning tools and innovative tech solutions. CDN’s library, “Open Content for Development” (OC4D) is free via app, website, or wifi community hot-spot offline  (RACHEL). Dr. Tiffany Ivins Spence of CDN has also recommended the Raspberry Pi, which will give students the freedom to participate in curriculum design.

We are positioned to propose digital solutions for the 150 pre-med students at USTL (Lodja, DR-Congo). They represent thousands of other pre-med students throughout the Congo whose universities lacked clinics or qualified faculty and were therefore also cut when the government established criteria for all pre-med programs. We propose a pilot program which will demonstrate the effectiveness of digital solutions and will open possibilities for all pre-med students in the country. 

As this pilot program restores the pre-med lectures at USTL, it will show how that the same may be done elsewhere in the country, thus restoring hope for students who just lost their program.

The Raspberry Pi  can 'make computing accessible and affordable' (https://www.raspberrypi.com/). Using the new 5G servers which have the RACHEL software on the Raspberry Pi quad core computer, students and administrators can design the best curriculum, execute tests to monitor progress, and meet all government requirements. 

We have assembled a perfect team for stepping into the future: a film production organization, a non-profit with vast experience in the designated work area (Lodja), a network specializing in innovative digital technology, and the university itself.  We are also bringing in a Congolese businessman, Aime Mbuyi, to help structure the program. The work will be cooperative and synergistic. Laboratory demonstrations may be filmed in Kinshasa for full instruction and duplicated in the clinic at USTL when it is equipped.

This proposal also requests funding for medical equipment to furnish the university's clinic.

At present, USTL (University of Science and Technology- Lodja) is failing due to the suspension of the medical track of education. In addition, its isolation from the rest of the DRC--it is accessible either by a two-week boat/truck trip or by a weekly flight--has resulted in incomplete projects. Its clinic was being built and was to have been in service in 2020, but because of COVID19, flights to Lodja were suspended and the work on the clinic was halted. 

Poverty is the strongest mitigating factor in USTL's success. Professors are paid with tuition money, but most students cannot pay full tuition, which is $300/year. Tuition was also intended to cover flights for the medical professors from Kinshasa, at a cost of $800/round trip (USD). These trips have also been halted. With the suspension of the medical program and the failure of the clinic due to COVID19, the university is in rapid decline while medical needs in the area increase.

We are looking for financial support to put a program in place which cancels the need for transporting professors and which can restore instruction to the students who lost their program. We are also seeking a way to finish the clinic and furnish it with equipment which will facilitate on-hands medical training. 

The RACHEL (www.worldpossible.org) was released in June, 2018 in a pilot program in Tanzania. Since then, it has been taken to 53 countries where it has been successfully deployed in rural communities without internet. The RACHEL provides a limited wi-fi connection and makes customizable curriculum available for as many as fifty devices within a close range.

The Raspberry Pi was released in 2012 and has been improved since for use in rural communities. It is less costly than the RACHEL, and when used synergistically with the RACHEL will provide mobile libraries, films, curriculum, and training for anyone with a mobile devise within range. The new 5G technology brings both technologies together.

We have put the RACHEL into use in Lodja at several strategic points--one school, one medical office, and one home--and found it to accomplish exactly what we had hoped it would. Thirty-five students accessed curriculum on their phones or on Chromebooks using the RACHEL hub. We are ready to deploy all of these interconnected innovations as we pursue a pre-med curriculum.

We have successfully uploaded films to the RACHEL and shown them. The creation of instructional films by a Congolese team is an innovation which serves the DR-Congo specifically, inasmuch as lectures and demonstrations will be filmed in French. Once filmed, the lectures can be taken via the RACHEL or Raspberry Pi into any rural Francophone community. (Translation into indigenous languages may be required in some cases, but that is available on-site.) Film files may be emailed to any Francophone rural village with an internet connection.

Bimpa Production has also successfully filmed in Lodja and in the surrounding areas. Though American and South African teams rejected the DR-Congo as suitable for filming due to its lack of infrastructure, Bimpa Production amd its Congolese team members understand how to prepare for exigencies in an area with limited access to electricity. Bimpa Production filmed about ten hours in the Lodja area. The films Bimpa Production will produce for this project will not require such attention to exigencies because the filming will be in medical clinics and laboratories in Kinshasa. Nonetheless, it is important that Bimpa Production knows how to successfully and innovatively film and transfer film in the DR-Congo. 

Special medical procedures in Lodja require special training, which has heretofore been done by transporting a doctor with such training from another area.

Whatever we do in our pilot program as we use the new technology to re-establish a pre-med track of studies at USTL will be replicable elsewhere in the DR-Congo and throughout the world. 

Next Year: 

1) Film the lectures and laboratory demonstrations for virtual instruction. This will be done by Bimpa Production in Kinshasa, DRC.

2) Complete the clinic at USTL, Lodja, where construction was halted during COVID19. (Construction has been started but is not finished. There are not enough funds to purchase medical equipment, so the clinic's construction has not resumed since COVID19.)

3) Restore the pre-med track of studies at the University of Sciences and Technology in Lodja, DR-Congo, which was cut in 2021 because it lacked qualified faculty and a clinic.

Five years: Open a medical school in Lodja which will serve all surrounding villages including nearby villages whose "clinics" comprise one table, one desk, one bottle of aspirin, and one bottle of anesthesia.

The classes will incorporate the RACHEL and digitized evaluations as well as laboratory experience. Lectures will be filmed to fit the needs of an excellent medical school.

With a medical school on site, we anticipate that the university will attract students from all areas of the DR-Congo and that Lodja itself will reverse its decline and again become a thriving city.

We are ready to begin the pilot program which aims to restore medical studies at USTL. It will take several months to film the lectures and laboratory demonstrations, during which time we plan to complete and to equip the clinic, which was abandoned due to suspension of flights during COVID19. We will work with the minister of higher education to be sure we meet government requirements in order to restore the program. 

Note that any of the students who could afford to study elsewhere did so, often leaving their families behind. We would like to reunite these students with their families as a part of restoring the medical program. 

As we advance in this online education and appropriate evaluations and clinic work, we will be prepared to open a medical school for all in the Lodja area.

We envision having the medical education program restored within a year of having the funds, and we envision opening medical school at USTL within five years.

Once this virtual instruction is in place, additional lectures and demonstrations can always be added. Film files can be sent to residents of Lodja or wherever else the virtual schools have been established and uploaded by the faculty on the ground.

Markers of progress:

1) Restoration of the pre-med program with new technology in place

2) Completion and furnishing of the clinic

3) Establishment of the medical school

1) We film medical lectures and laboratory demonstrations to help medical students learn needed material for a medical education and for diagnosing and treating diseases.

2) In Lodja, we move instruction in medical studies from in-person (not currently sustainable) to virtual via these films which may be downloaded onto any RACHEL server or Raspberry Pi technology and shown in any community.

3) The virtual lectures and laboratory demonstrations allow medical studies which were suspended in 2021 to resume.  As a result, 150 students who lost their program are able to finish it, and those who left Lodja to pursue their studies elsewhere can return to their families.

4) After the pilot program in Lodja, the online medical instruction will be available for anyone in rural areas of the DR-Congo. With a solar panel, the RACHEL can sustain its charge anywhere.

5) With lectures and laboratory demonstrations in place, a medical clinic is completed and equipped, allowing students to practise what they have learned from their online instruction. 

Each step prepares for the next, with the goal of an on-site medical school solidly in view.

Film, the RACHEL, and Raspberry Pi

The RACHEL: (Remote Area Community Hotspot for Education and Learning) is a portable, battery-powered, device that contains copies of educational websites in offline format. This means RACHEL can go anywhere in the world and wirelessly deliver free digital educational content to nearby tablets, laptops, or smartphones with no internet or data plans required. 

Note that 30 Chromebooks and 20 mobile devices are already in place in Lodja.

Raspberry Pi is a series of small single-board computers developed in England. The Raspberry Pi project originally leaned towards the promotion of teaching basic computer science in schools and in developing countries. It was soon clear that the Raspberry Pi could provide digital resources at a low cost everywhere, and so such access has been succeessfully pursued. The Raspberry Pi is less expensive than the RACHEL, and the two devices work together well. The new 5G servers which include the RACHEL software on the Raspberry Pi quad core computer complete the synergy. 

For this project, we will use Bimpa Production to film laboratory demonstrations and lectures in French. The company is 100% Congolese and has made numerous award-winning films. We want all filmed lectures and accompanying demonstrations to be high-quality.

Our team includes two American women (Margaret Young from Congo Rising and Tiffany Ivins Spence from Community Development Network) who head organizations specializing in community and industry development. Not only do they have experience working in Africa, they have connections with other catalyzing organizations. These women bring the technology and experience to implement the proposed solutions. The rest of the team is Congolese and includes the president of the university, Veron Blaise On Okundji, where this initiative will be put into place, filmmakers in Kinshasa (Tshoper Kabambi and Deborah Bassa) who will film lectures and demonstrations, and the professors of medicine themselves, including Dr. Norbert Djamba. In addtion, we have a Congolese businessman, Aime Mbuyi, to help structure the growth of the initiative.

The project as a whole serves a vulnerable population in the DR-Congo, separated from the rest of the DR-Congo by transportation issues and subject to illness of all kinds, and therefore in great need of trained doctors. 

We serve a poor population in Lodja, DR-Congo. The general hospital there, which serves the poorest people, does not charge for treatment, but it lacks sanitary conditions and sufficient power to run microscopes and to light the rooms. Doctors tend to leave Lodja in search of better employment. We anticipate that with this program, doctors will be more likely to stay in place and participate in the ongoing medical training, even offering their own expertise in up-loadable films. This then provides in-place economic stability and opportunities to attract grants and investments and for the population to grow other industries. The model we are using can also be used in entrepreneurship training. Our model diminishes limits on learning and so opens possibilities for training in anything.

Congo Rising is a non-profit corporation with offices in Utah (USA) and the DR-Congo (Kinshasa). For this initiative, Congo Rising is partnered with Community Development Network ( https://comdevnet.org/) which has successfully deployed digital solutions to community issues throughout the world and particularly in Africa. For the filming of lectures and demonstrations, this initiatie employs Bimpa Production, a for-profit production company based in Kinshasa, DR-Congo with a stellar record of production. As Bimpa Production has succeeded, its trained directors and technicians have formed their own production companies, and any or all of these companies may also be employed in this initiative. Their success suggests the future success of the medical program.

Together, the goal of these partners is to provide humanitarian aid, create jobs, foster educational and vocational opportunities, and bring to light the needs of people in one of the poorest areas of the world. As it restores the medical track of study at Lodja's University of Science and Technology and ultimately establishes a medical school, it also will prove the effectiveness of digital training in a remote area, a template which can be duplicated anywhere in the world. Medical training produces skilled doctors, who can return to Lodja and surrounding areas to improve medical care there and can be paid for their services.

All principals and advisors have extensive experience and skill in digital training and film--both production and use of film in digital instruction--in remote areas. The  strategic partners, Bimpa Production and Community Development Network, have garnered attention for their ability to successfully addressing needs in the most vulnerable areas.

Based in Africa, the partners not only maintain a low cost structure, but are able to successfully attract grants, donations and private investment to subsidize its budgets. The initiative draws from the local talent pool, and maintains strong working relationships with local authorities and universities.

The partners are experienced in working in Africa, but will focus on the DR-Congo for particular reasons. Ranked the poorest country in the world by FocusEconomics, the DR-C and Lodja in particular have been devastated by the incursion of troops from several nations involved in the Second Congo War (1998 - 2004), and isolation due to COVID19. The government's requirement that medical studies have accompanying clinics and certified professors has not been attainable in the intense poverty. 

Rebuilding this area is more than just a matter of providing money or even humanitarian aid, material goods and medical care, though. Real, lasting change also involves rebuilding the spirit of the people and providing them with a vision of the future full of purpose, meaning, and hope. 

Lodja was once a powerful city. Its steady decline positions it to be the ideal place for a project such as this one, where effectiveness can easily be measured. When the university is returned to its full strength, the entire city will return to a functional status and doctors will be trained to work in any of the hospitals there, and particularly in the one used by the most vulnerable, the General Hospital.

This initiative will restore hope and health to the people in and around Lodja. Equally important is the fact that the project's success will also create a model for any rural area throughout the world, which will in turn open opportunities for economic growth and will attract future grants and investments.

In initial stages, we will rely on grants and impact investments, but we anticipate that the success of the project will offer extraordinary opportunities to put its features into place throughout the world. We focus particularly on the DR-Congo, which has millions of people in rural communities with inadequate medical care. As the project proves the value of the RACHEL and Raspberry Pi and the synergistic 5G  servers along with film, all features may be employed for any training, including entrepreneurial. Training for making and bottling juice, for example, can happen with the technology we are offering, as can training for filmmaking, computer programming, literacy, literature, etc. There are no limits on what this program can catalyze. As it does so, it will be used by more and more entrepreneurs, thus creating an upward-moving, evolving profit margin.

Congo Rising Corporation supported Bimpa Production in making two feature films by providing training and equipment. Bimpa Production in turn helped numerous Congolese filmmakers make their movies and distribute them. From that one production company, another five production companies have emerged and the film festival initiated by Bimpa Production has become globally supported and profitable. The filmmaking industry in the DRC is becoming viable and competitive with industries throughout the world.

Congo Rising has tested the RACHEL in Lodja and found it successful. We anticipate that the merger of these three organizations will result in the growth of many entrepreneurships.