Breakthrough for Backpack Team

Beds and mosquito nets in Nyamata rural clinic

by Gale Wiley

Kigali, Rwanda (Tuesday, March 2, 2010) -- The backpack team is exploring a deal to supply its "community hospital in a backpack" to entrepreneurs who are launching a business in Burundi.

"Two entrepreneurs from Florida have trained 16 Burundi nurses who will provide basic mobile medical care on a fee-for-services basis," said EMBA Leonard Yowell, a backpack team member. "The nurses would use a micro finance loan to pay for their backpacks that the nurses would use to carry their medical supplies."

Presumably, as the nurses earn money by providing basic health care, they could pay back their loans, replenish their community backpacks with supplies, and have income -- all at the same time.

The Burundi deal is exactly the kind of business Professor Marc Epstein would like to see for his teams of MBAs who are working to commercialize four Rice-developed bio-medical devices:

• a backpack
• a C-clamp that controls oral syringe doses
• an IV drip monitor, and
• a battery- powered device for helping babies to breathe.

The Burundi deal would create jobs, improve basic health care, and most of all not rely on foreign aide -- a truly sustainable model for an emerging economy.

More good news

On a tour of Utexrwa, the only textile plant in Rwanda, the backpack team confirmed from Raj Rajendran, Utexrwa's managing director, that his company could produce backpacks for the team, thus generating jobs for Rwandans.

In his native Hindi, backpack team leader, Sharad Malhautra, confirmed with a production manager that not only could Utexrwa provide waterproof material but it could also produce backpacks.

Of course, the backpack team still has many hurdles before them.

• Will the Rwanda's testing labs provide the stamp of approval for the backpack's many medical devices. (Just because a microscope has been approved in the United States, for example, does not mean the device will pass Rwanda's testing laboratories.)
• How do medical suppliers operate in Rwanda?
• Outside of the Burundi deal, who in Rwanda would be the ultimate consumer for the backpack in Rwanda? NGOs? The Rwandan government? Entrepreneurs like the two orlano businessmen?
  
• Can the backpack team develop a flexible business model that will entice an entrepreneur to invest in or run this company?