Use of DMU e-Parasitology in a West African university.

Abstract

Following the devastating effects of the 2013-16 ebola outbreak on the Sierra Leonean public health system, De Montfort University (DMU, UK) is leading a project to build the teaching and research capabilities of medical parasitology at the University of Makeni (UniMak, Sierra Leone). A DMU researcher visited UniMak for two weeks in April 2019 and provided a voluntary short training course (theoretical and practical) in basic parasitology, using our novel web-based resource DMU e-Parasitology® (http://parasitology.dmu.ac.uk/index.htm), which is little taught in their programmes. Following this training, UniMak’s academics offered a voluntary practical to study the presence of coccidian human parasites in farm pig stool samples to final year students enrolled in the degree of ‘Public Health: Medical Laboratory Sciences’. Nine of the eighteen students that attended the practical provided feedback: 88.9% (22.2% agreed, 66.7% strongly agreed) indicated that the videos displaying how to perform the Kinyoun stain facilitated their learning; and only 11.1% indicated that the web-based resources did not help them to perform the Kinyoun stain. Our results would indicate that the DMU e-Parasitology® is an appropriate resource to introduce and facilitate the teaching of emerging and opportunistic parasitic diseases in a low-income university.