Emergency blood from the Sky
You can hear the hum of the drone-almost akin to the whining of mosquitoes before the sighting. Emerging from an altitude of approximately 150 feet, the small plane like instrument descends to a distance where it can comfortably make its drop – another delivery of blood for transfusion. A cardboard container, attached to a parachute and made of wax and biodegradable tape lands on the ground, to be picked by medics- its contents lifesaving, likely to be used for transfusions in surgeries or child birth. Welcome to Rwanda, where blood delivery by drones, made possible by Zipline, a Califonia based company, is revolutionizing how urgent medical supplies are delivered.
Use of drones the project is proving a success, and the entrepreneurs behind it are eyeing expansion. Rwanda picked on Zipline in 2016- on a trial basis. This made it the first country in the world to integrate drones into its airspace and to begin daily operations of autonomous deliveries in record time to clinics in remote areas. “When the drones came, we didn’t know what to expect but we aligned and sometimes we had to circumvent our laws and policies so that this plan could work”, says Dr. Mazarati Jean Baptiste, the head of biomedical services department at the Rwanda Biomedical Center.
Currently, Zipline is focused exclusively on delivering blood. That might sound simple but it is really complicated says Keller Rinaudo, Co-Founder and CEO, Zipline, “The government of Rwanda delivers about 65,000 units of blood a year; 50% of that goes to mothers suffering from postpartum haemorrhaging and 30% goes to children under the age of five suffering from anemia.”
Blood supply the topography of Rwanda- a hilly one and for that matter, makes deliveries a difficult task, coupled with poor infrastructure in the rural areas. Hospitals in remote areas have a hard time getting reliable blood supply. The reliance on slow and outdated modes of transport pose a major challenge in growth of access to medical aid. In some cases, suppliers of blood would say they weren’t going to make it. Transportation by road in the best case scenario takes slightly between four to five hours but with Zipline, the four to five hours is reduced to about just fifteen to twenty minutes. “To save a life, time is really important”, says Dr. Mazarati.
The team at Zipline in partnership with the Rwandan government has placed a center next to an existing medical warehouse enabling the drones to make hundreds of deliveries per day to any location within range from the warehouse,” he says. So how does it work? A doctor sends the hospital’s order by text or phone call to the medical warehouse. Once the order is received, attendants at the medical warehouse package it. Once packed onto the drone, it’s launched and remotely controlled to the clinic through an already mapped path; the clinic receives a text message alerting them to get ready to receive the package. The drone then drops the package at a designated drop off point, to be picked by the hospital medics. The drone turns around and heads back to the medical warehouse to make other deliveries.
So far, the Rwandan government through Zipline has achieved over 300,000-km of aerial deliveries, across 5,000 flights that have provided 7,000 units of blood to health care services. Zipline is on phase one of its project in Rwanda- servicing the Western and Southern parts of the country; the most populated areas of Rwanda. Out of the twenty one hospitals they are supposed to service by end of 2018, the tech company is now servicing seventeen hospitals. A second drone port is under construction in the Eastern part of Rwanda. Once completed, this drone port is expected to service both the Eastern and Northern parts of Rwanda. Both ports are expected to enable Zipline deliver blood to hospitals in the entire country.
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