You can hear the drone before it’s visible, whining like a mosquito above the hillside grounds of Rwanda’s Kabgayi District Hospital. Emerging through a patch of fog, roughly 100 feet in the air, the small plane quickly disappears again, circling in an oblong pattern as it descends toward an altitude low enough to make its drop. After a period of silence, it’s suddenly back, swooping over the roof of Kabgayi’s accident ward to drop its payload on the driveway with a thud. On the ground lies a red cardboard container, roughly the size of a shoebox, attached to a parachute made of wax paper and biodegradable tape. The contraption may resemble a children’s art project, but its contents are lifesaving. Packed tightly inside are two units of human blood, which will probably soon be used for transfusions during surgeries or complicated childbirths, or to treat young victims of malaria.

The plastic sachets of blood are among the first commercial products ever delivered by drone, part of a partnership between the Rwandan government and the Silicon Valley–based robotics firm Zipline, which began introducing the blood drops at -Kabgayi in late 2016. The service, which is now delivering to seven of 21 planned facilities, is still in its infancy. Yet it has already had an impact. In the past, hospital staff would make three drives per week to procure blood products in the capital, Kigali, 60 kilometers away, a three- to four-hour round trip. Emergencies meant additional trips—sometimes resulting in life-threatening delays. Now, a Kabgayi lab technician simply taps out an order on a smartphone and Zipline’s distribution center, located five kilometers from the hospital, will have a drone there within 15 minutes. “Before, it was a serious problem to have blood when we needed it,” says Espoir Kajibwami, a surgeon who served as Kabgayi’s medical director until February. In emergency cases, he says, the hospital would often send the patient to the national referral hospital in Kigali rather than wait for the blood to arrive.

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Image via Flickr  Some rights reserved by World Bank Photo Collection

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