This story was originally published by Reasons to be Cheerful
Five minutes before midnight on the last day of 2023, a doctor in northern Rwanda sent a WhatsApp message requesting supplies. His patient, a woman who had just given birth, was hemorrhaging.
By land, it would take about four hours to reach this region of the mountainous country. Instead, the journey took just 18 minutes. A drone dropped a red box, containing a blood product that supports coagulation, with a white paper parachute outside the medical center.
But after the treatment, the woman was still struggling.
“Within another 10 minutes we were able to send blood to save the young mother,” says Pierre Kayitana, the Rwanda general manager for Zipline, the company that operates the drone system that serves medical centers across the central African country.
The post Drones Are Whizzing Lifesaving Supplies Across the ‘Last Mile’ appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.
