Drones to fly drugs to Kalangala HIV patients

The Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI) has secured more funding to enrol another 500 patients in the Islands district of Kalangala on ARVs.

According to IDI, the drugs will be delivered using drones. The exercise is expected to start next year.

Speaking at the project review work and impact dissemination workshop last Friday, Dr Rosalind Parkes, the head of research and development at the Academy for Health Innovations at the IDI, said they started flying HIV/Aids drugs to 60 patients in Bufumira Sub-county in Kalangala Islands one year ago.

“It is one year of uninterrupted supply since we started flying the drugs. They haven’t travelled by boat to the health centre. We are analysing their loads. The health centre has asked us to top up the delivery so that by December, we would have reached 100 patients. We received more money from Johnson and Johnson Corporation to reach another 500 patients,” she said.

“At the moment, we were not able to support all the people linked to Bufumira Island because we need drones that can go about 30kms like we did in Adjumani during the second wave of Covid-19.  We delivered 700 samples [of drugs] between Moyo and Adjumani. We have many drone projects all over Africa, but no one is delivering to patients directly as we are,” she said.

Asked what they think about the outcomes of the project they funded, Mr Richard Ndahiro the technical adviser for UN Capital Development Fund, said besides the Kalangala project, they funded IDI to implement another drones pilot project in West Nile to understand whether they [drones] are feasible.

He said they have now proved that drones can deliver medical supplies within a short time period compared to boda boda riders and vehicles.

“We also wanted to know whether drones have been accepted by communities and health workers and we managed to prove acceptability.  The time spent to deliver medical supplies has reduced, but this undertaking needs a lot more resources to be supported,” he said.

Dr Suraj Man Shrestha, a programme officer at WHO, said different countries are introducing new technologies to increase access to medical services.

“The national medical stores is the defacto institution which supplies medicines throughout the country. They should embrace new technologies to void stock-out of drugs. In the West, drones are being rolled out so rapidly, so we should be having discussions on the investment,” he said.

He cited Rwanda and Mozambique as examples of African countries, which are currently deploying drones and parachutes to improve health services.

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