(4 Mar 2017) LEAD-IN:
Drones have been much touted for their potential to make deliveries.
In Africa a San Francisco-based drone delivery company are using drones to help save lives, making deliveries of blood and medicine in Rwanda.
STORYLINE:
Drone delivery is saving lives in Rwanda.
A San Francisco-based drone delivery company began making its first deliveries of blood and medicine in Rwanda in July 2016.
Nickson Hu, Operations manager Zipline Rwanda explains how it works:
"When we receive an order here, our health ops team packs the order, communicates to the customer that hey we are packing the order its on the way. We pack it in the cardboard box that you saw earlier. That box will go out the window of the warehouse container here and into our 'Zip' or what we call our drones here. Once we pack it into the zip we take it outside, we do our safety checks, we launch it, that Zip flies automatically to its destination. It will drop the package via parachute and deliver life saving products everyday."
A staffer launched a fixed-wing plane weighing just 22 pounds off a launcher that used compressed air from their base in Muhanga in Southern Rwanda, heads for the compound of Kabgayi Hospital, some four miles away to demonstrate its technology for an AP journalist.
"The flights that we do all depend on our customer and at the hospitals this number can vary day to day. Some days they may have a lot of mothers that deliver and have post-partum haemorrhage for example, so some days we will have over twenty units delivered, and some days we will have less than that. So again very difficult to give you an average, but I can tell you that we do get orders many times a week, such that the hospital has the demand met," says Hu.
Electric-powered propellers take it the rest of the way, on a flight that could extend to a 75 mile round trip, using military-grade GPS and software to navigate.
As it dips low before the drop-off area the bottom pops open, and a cardboard box with a parachute made of butcher paper and biodegradable tape bursts out, plopping to the ground a few steps away where a waiting nurse walks over to retrieve it.
And since deliveries of packages up to 3.5 pounds can be completed in 15-30 minutes, modest packaging has eliminated the need for refrigeration along the way.
Laurentie Mukankusi, a patient at the hospital says she believes that her son's life could have been saved by faster blood delivery.
"In this hospital many people lost their lives because of a lack of blood. My son is one of them, we brought him here in a critical condition then they went to get blood in Kigali, when they came back it was too late and my son died. We hope that this new system will help to save many people."
Hospital technician Prosper Uzabakiriho agrees:
"Drone has solved many problems, it deals with the blood and its components in this hospital. Because now with (this) drone, blood is obtained on time, so that we can save peoples lives without any delay."
Two hubs contained in modified shipping containers with 10 to 15 planes each are all that's required to serve all of Rwanda, Zipline says.
The company for now is focused on medical supply delivery in emerging economies where there is less air traffic and regulations are easier to deal with than in the U.S. or Europe.
Zipline International Inc., is backed by tech heavyweights like Sequoia Capital and Google Ventures.
Already, drones are being used in parts of Africa as visual aids in mapping and anti-poaching.
Drones also face multiple challenges. Some models are limited in range or need frequent recharging.
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