Drones can save lives by providing healthcare in rural India: WEF report

As government bodies, businesses and healthcare providers tackle the urgent need for better access to healthcare in rural India, a new experimental programme launched by World Economic Forum (WEF) has shown that drones can be used to bring quality healthcare to people living in the remotest areas of India.

The findings of the trial, outlined in the report "Medicine from the Sky, India: How Drones Can Make Primary Healthcare Accessible to All," offer a practical vision for delivering essential medicines to citizens who lack access to basic healthcare, WEF said in a statement.

In this programme, which was held in the Vikarabad district of the southern state of Telangana, eight healthcare centres with a population of over 3,00,000 people took part in a 45-day trial in which the health workers delivered vaccines, COVID-19 testing samples and medical products using over 300 drones.

Interestingly, the Vikarabad district was chosen because few of its communities live in the Anantagiri hills’ dense forests. The trial involved 45 days.

The WEF called it the first successful trial in Asia of long-range vaccine delivery and added that “it shows how drone technology can be scaled up across India to meet urgent healthcare needs in remote areas.”

Meanwhile, Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said, “With the recent liberalisation of drone rules and the numerous government incentives for the drone sector, the stage is set for this innovative technology to flourish in India. To that end, the Medicine from the Sky initiative has demonstrated how the country can successfully make use of cutting-edge drone technology to ensure no one is left behind in terms of access to primary healthcare. We are hopeful that subsequent phases of this initiative will mainstream drones in healthcare.”

The trial was conducted as a part of a wider programme, Medicine from the Sky, led by the WEF’s ‘Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution India’ event, in partnership with the Telangana government, NITI Aayog and Apollo Hospital’s Healthnet Global.

Sangita Reddy, joint managing director, said that the organisation’s mission was “to enable access to quality healthcare services globally with the use of cutting-edge technology”

“We look forward to continuing working with the World Economic Forum, the Government of Telangana and other states across the country in this project, which I am sure would be the inception of a new age in enhancing the healthcare supply chain,” she said.

The programme was aimed at working with policy-makers, businesses and communities to use drone technology for extending urban-grade healthcare to the remotest areas of India. Several stakeholders were consulted, including healthcare workers, local communities, local police, district-level administrators and local air traffic control, the WEF said in a report.