28/08/2022
Use drones for primary health care in India. India has over 30,000 primary health centres (PHC) and over 250,000 sub-centres (SC) across the country that serve as the building blocks of government led primary health system. Each PHC serves 20-50,000 people with upstream linkages to district hospital and downstream linkages to about 5-10 SCs. Each of the 748 districts in India has around 20-100 PHCs depending on their population. Drones can be safely and reliably deliver multiple medical payloads simultaneously and improve access to vaccines, lab samples and possibly on demand medical products to primary health centres and sub-centre’s in rural, remote, and hard to reach areas. The drones will be flown from existing ware houses or from custom designed mobile launch pad, complete with fridges, freezers, continuous communication and a real time command centre.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/ht-insight/public-health/a-case-to-use-drones-for-primary-health-care-in-india-101639645878972.html
The study has been authored by Dr.Suresh Munuswamy, MBBS from Madras University, MPH from Oxford Univrersity, PhD from Tokyo University; Associate Professor, Indian Institute of Public Health-Hyderabad