Team Blitz India
NEW DELHI: Blood delivery through drones can soon be expanded to the whole country, a senior official said after the Indian Council of Medical Research successfully conducted on May 10 a trial run of blood bag delivery by drones under its iDrone initiative.
The initiative was in continuance with the national mission of expanding the drone ecosystem in India.
The ‘i-DRONE’ was first used by ICMR during the COVID-19 pandemic for distributing vaccines to hard-to-reach areas.
“Today, we are transporting blood and blood-related products which are supposed to be kept at a low temperature. After the experiment, we found that not only can we maintain the temperature but there was also no damage to the products transported.
“We sent another sample through an ambulance and if there are no differences in the samples sent using the two modes then drones will be used all over India,” said Dr Rajiv Bahl, the director general of ICMR.
Certain countries are already using drones to deliver blood products, vaccines, pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, and even organs to remote, rural areas or areas with poor infrastructure.
