Drones with life-saving blood zip across hilly Rwanda
“THREE, two, one, launch!” And with that, catapulted from a ramp, the small fixed-wing drone buzzes into the air towards its programmed destination, Kabgayi Hospital, 2km away in Rwanda.
On Friday, Rwanda inaugurated a drone operation that its backers hope will start a revolution in the supply of medical care in rural parts of Africa, in the first instance by delivering batches of blood to 21 clinics in the west of the country.
Maternal mortality rates in Africa are among the highest in the world, according to the World Health Organisation, largely due to postpartum haemorrhage and the lack of access to blood transfusions.
Rwanda is no exception, and the situation is worsened by the topography of a country dubbed “the land of a thousand hills” and subject to intense seasonal rains.
Blood “is a very precious commodity so you cannot just stock a lot of it in every single health centre”, said Keller Rinaudo, CEO of Zipline, a California robotics company that designed the 15 drones and the base housing them in Muhanga, 50km west of the capital, Kigali.
Rinaudo hopes his drone delivery system will “allow the Rwandan government to instantly deliver life-saving transfusions to any citizen in the country in 15 to 30 minutes”.
US package-delivery giant UPS and global vaccine alliance Gavi have invested $1.1-million (about R15.5-million) in the Zipline project, one of a handful in Africa seeking to harness the potential of delivery drones to overcome poor infrastructure.
For Rwanda, blood delivery by drone is not cheaper, but promises to be much faster.
The drones, dubbed “Zips”, are shaped like a fat-bellied plane and have a 2m wingspan.
They are battery-powered with a range of 150km, weigh 13kg and can carry a cargo of about 1.5kg, or three bags of blood. Flying at up to 70km/h, each drone could make as many as 150 deliveries a day.
At the tent that serves as a launch station, Zipline technicians monitor the drones from laptops while others prepare the payload: small cardboard boxes with paper parachutes that will hold the transfusion blood and be dropped from a height of about 20m.
As the test flights were carried out, curious residents peered through the fence, watching as the drones were flung into the air, returning after dropping their cargo at the hospital, and landing on an inflatable mattress.
Zipline plans to open a second base in Rwanda next year, bringing the whole of the tiny country within range.
“These flights will save lives,” said Gregg Svingen, head of communications at UPS. “Today it is blood, tomorrow it will be vaccines.”— AFP