Up, Up, and Away: Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Flights (UAVs): A unique flight-based technological solution reducing waiting times for HIV testing
UNICEF, in coordination with the government of Malawi, recently launched a pilot program testing the use of unmanned aerial vehicle flights (UAVs) to transport blood samples between health centers and laboratories in hopes of reducing waiting times for HIV testing in infants, especially in remote areas.
The first successful flight was initiated in early March, in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe. With one of the highest HIV rates in the world, every year around 10,000 children in Malawi die of HIV. According to UNICEF’s Malawi Country Representative, in 2014 approximately 40,000 children were born to HIV-positive mothers.
Early diagnosis for children of HIV positive mothers is essential. Infants who get treatment for HIV (i.e. Antiretroviral therapy) early on have a higher chance of survival. And so the longer the delay for testing and results can have serious, negative outcomes in infant survival. Currently, it takes 11 days for HIV testing samples to be transported from a health center to a laboratory, and up to an additional 4 weeks for results to be sent back.
Transportation barriers further hinder and slow down this process. Currently in Malawi, samples are transported by motorbike or local ambulances, but because of various factors such as high cost of fuel, traffic, and poor road infrastructure, mothers can end up waiting several months to know whether or not their child is HIV-positive. And so through this flight-based technology which when tested in Malawi covered 10km, up to 250 blood samples can be transported safely through an UAV, reducing waiting times of testing and results from months to days.
Currently, the public health sub-group is following the three-phase delay model (from the article read earlier this year, “Too Far to Walk: Maternal Mortality in Context) in understanding maternal care in Sub-Saharan Africa, and applying it to pre-eclamptic women in Zanzibar, Tanzania. Delayed treatment due to several factors leads to the most negative outcomes for patients, especially pre-eclamptic women. The model points out delay factors common in Sub-Saharan Africa; distance and cost. In Zanzibar, long distances to health facilities and high cost of services to transport samples are common. And so for the future, it may be beneficial for the program to look into technological innovations such as UAVs to transport lab samples to health facilities and back if distance and cost of transport are seen as major barriers for tackling health issues-even outside the scope of pre-eclampsia, such as malaria or HIV.