Congolese teach important skills in disease prevention to U.S. service members during MEDLITE 11

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. John Orrell
  • 17th Air Force Public Affairs
KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of the Congo --  For a change of pace at the MEDLITE 11 medical exercise training, members of the Democratic Republic of the Congo's military medical group took the podium April 28 and trained U.S. service members about the dangers of tropical diseases at the auditorium of the Centre Superior Militaire Academy here.

Members of the U.S. and Congolese military listened to briefings from DRC Colonel's Omer Djembe Kitenge and Maurice Puate, in their respective languages thanks to interpreters.

"Your armed forces travel a lot, and because tropical diseases don't make themselves noticeable quickly, it is important to educate yourself on how to prevent these diseases in both treatment and prevention," said Puate, who is the coordinator of the fight against tuberculosis for the DRC military.

With a high risk of becoming infected by a tropical disease such as malaria and tuberculosis, Dijembe Kitenge and Puate stressed the importance of education and awareness.

"When a person becomes too sick, they miss work which reduces our capability to fight and it can become quite dangerous," said Dijembe Kitenge, who is the coordinator of the fight against malaria for the DRC military.

"That's why during this training it has been so important for us to learn from them and for them to learn from us," he said.

With about 72 million citizens, just over one-fourth the size of the United States, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has almost twice the amount of daily deaths, many of those from diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis.

"Our country is an endemic country," Dijembe Kitenge said.

"That is why we have to share our experiences, because as Soldiers, we need to ensure that our American friends, who do not have malaria in their country, are safe while here and safe after they return home," he said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, malaria has an incubation time of seven to 30 days and can be avoided if the proper anti-malarial drug is taken.

"You should be very careful and always aware of the effects and possibilities of these tropical diseases," Dijembe Kitenge said. "After today, I hope that everyone understands the danger of these diseases."

U.S. Air Force Col. Joe Maslar, the chief of aerospace medicine for the Illinois Air National Guard's 183rd Fighter Wing and an emergency room doctor for a hospital in Chicago, Ill., said that the threat of tropical diseases in the U.S. are not even close to the threat as they are here and that is part of the problem when it comes to prevention.

"In the states we don't see it, we think it's a disease of other people," Maslar said. "When we come here we're cavalier, but we need to realize that people die from this everyday.

"That is why service members tend to become complacent when it comes to the prevention of these diseases, then they end up getting very sick, when they could have just taken their pills and avoided this all together.

"We don't give malaria the respect that we should, it's something [the Congolese] deal with every day and when 20-40 percent of their hospitalizations a day are due to malaria, it gives us more knowledge to bring back to the troops and more ammunition to help prevent this disease in service members."

After the training, U.S. Air Force 1st Lt. Jodi Smith, a flight nurse with the Wyoming Air National Guard's 187th Airlift Wing and an emergency room nurse for a Veterans Affairs hospital, said she was very happy with the detail and passion that was shown by the Congolese trainers.

"They did a fantastic job with their teaching," she said. "They are very knowledgeable and well-educated and we are able to understand each other at the same [skill] level so this is going to add to our education level as well."

Puate felt that the training was well-received and was happy with the continued relationship that has been building since 2010.

"The American's with us here have been helping the Congolese Army with health services training this year and the continued relationship we built with last year's [MEDFLAG 10] exercise," he said. "I am very pleased and happy to be briefing U.S. service members, and we have become close and we really complement each other."

In closing Maslar recalled a statistic from the training that he said would stay with him and keep him motivated to educate and coordinate the proper usage of anti-malarial medication.

"Every 30 seconds a child dies from malaria, and every year one-to-two million die," he said.

MEDLITE 11 is an exercise that aims to improve the readiness of both countries' medical personnel and will consist of classroom instruction, an aeromedical-evacuation training scenario and will conclude with a mass-casualty exercise May 4.