Blood service unveils new delivery drone

THE South African National Blood Service (SANBS) revealed its new drone blood delivery service at the annual Media Breakfast at Coastlands Hotel in Musgrave recently.

Speaking at the breakfast, Sifiso Khoza, regional marketing manager of SANBS said the idea behind developing the drone came following a discussion with the Department of Health on how to help people in rural areas where there was a need for blood, especially in light of the high rate of deaths following child birth. The drone features a wing design suited for maximum efficiency and allows for long travel with minimal power usage. The drone has a range of over 100km and can travel at up to 180km per hour.

In April 2018 a drone task team was established to develop the drone, Blood Wing, which can carry up to four units of blood at a time.

When designing the drone, there were criteria taken into consideration including that it be fast to ensure that patients receive blood before they bleed out and that it could fly long distances to reach rural areas. Not only did the drone need to be able to transport blood to the patient, it sometimes needed to transport a sample of the patient’s blood to its centres first so that a perfect match could be found.

Other factors included that the drone needed to ensure that neither G-force nor temperature affected the integrity of the blood, and that the drone was able to glide to the ground in an emergency or deploy a parachute if necessary.

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A drone flight by SANBS can be done for as little as R10, which is much cheaper than flying blood in via helicopter.

“SANBS is trusted for saving lives, and for the past two to three years SANBS has tried to revise its purpose. Our mission is to reliably provide to people at a world class level and this drone shows that we are trying to be innovative in saving lives,” said Khoza.

At the breakfast, Phelelani Mkhize, zone donor manager for SANBS, encouraged people to donate over the festive season, when schools are closed, and when there is a need for blood stock to provide for patients in hospital.

Guest speaker, Gregory Naidoo, spoke about his experience following a traumatic car accident, where, during 31 days in hospital and multiple times in theatre, he received life-saving blood transfusions.

He encouraged people to donate blood: “My life was saved because people donated blood. Nothing beats being able to save someone’s life. The fact that we can donate blood gives us the power and the opportunity to go out there and make a difference,” he said.

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