Using Drones to Deliver Blood and Medical Supplies

There are various drones appearing in use all across the globe. Some are delivery drones that propose to deliver packages while others are used as more of a surveillance item. And now, with thanks to drone start-up company, Zipline, we will now see medical drones in operation in Rwanda delivering life-saving supplies to those in need.

The delivery program will work in partnership with five key hospitals, to begin with, but hope to expand this operation to over half the country’s hospitals in just one year. With the help of the drones, the delivery of vital medical supplies can be at the hospital within just 15 minutes where previously this would have taken around four hours on average. Rwanda’s minister of information and communication technology, Jean Philbert Nsengimana commented “In certain cases it was really bad. Roads could become inaccessible during the rainy season, slowing vital deliveries from the National Center for Blood Transfusion.”

 

These delivery drones are fixed-wing drones that look similar to that of a plane and is far more efficient than the quadcopter drones that are around. It can complete journeys of up to 93 miles in one go and simply drops the package out from inside its belly using a disposable parachute. Rolling out the program in Rwanda, puts the country way ahead of anyone else in terms of this type of technology.

People in the Western world and developed countries seem a little more reluctant to embrace the drones, and that sort of operation is still very much illegal in the U.S. The drones do have emergency parachutes in case the system fails and will not cause a great amount of damage in even the worst case scenario. But Rwanda’s residents are confident that the drones will only mean good things for them and are happy for the program to be going ahead. If lives can be saved, then what is the problem, right?

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