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Home > Robots > Drone Delivers Contraceptives to Women in Sub-Saharan Africa

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Home›Robots›Drone Delivers Contraceptives to Women in Sub-Saharan Africa

Drone Delivers Contraceptives to Women in Sub-Saharan Africa

By M. Christian
June 4, 2016
3290
1

Airlifted birth control to those in need.

We blast them, we train hawks to knock them out of the sky, we use nets to engulf them, we jam their electronics—suffice it to say that we are still dealing with growing presence of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).

In other words: drones.

With many companies working on using them for everything from delivering pizzas to shipping your online purchase, it’s easy to forget that they can also be an invaluable life-saving tool.

In fact, they have already become almost essential in disaster relief, a critical tool for inspecting infrastructure, a great way to monitor agriculture, and a valuable resource for law enforcement.

Recently, drones have also been used for a more special purpose: delivering condoms and birth control pills.

Getting it where it’s needed most

And when care agencies do find ways to get through, their priorities are to things like food, potable water, and antibiotics. This is absolutely well and good, but it also means that quality of life services often are pushed aside.Treacherous geography, political instability, financially impossible: for much of the world, access to essential medications is either extraordinarily difficult or completely unattainable.

Back in 2014, philanthropists, doctors, and healthcare experts were scratching their heads over this very same problem—and came up with an elegant technological solution: drones.

“They can rapidly deliver supplies that are about to run out. They might also prove useful in places where there is no ground transport,” said Dr. Renee Van de Weerdt, Senior Technical Adviser of Reproductive Health Commodities at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

[quote type=”center”]Delivery to the rural areas used to take two days. It will now take 30 minutes.[/quote]

Out of this came Dr. One, a health system delivery system that relies on small drones to improve the lives of people in developing countries”). Funded by the Dutch government and UNFPA, Dr. One began with trials in Ghana and has since widened to include six other African countries.

During these first trials, a drone was able to transport about 4.5 pounds of medical supplies, including birth control pills and condoms.

“Delivery to the rural areas used to take two days. It will now take 30 minutes,” UNFPA’s South African public health specialist Kanyanta Sunkutu said in The Huffington Post.

Not only is accessibility a major benefit of using drones, but there’s a financial benefit was well, as a delivery only costs $15 per shipment.

Help from above

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The resistance we thought we would get has not been there,” Sunkutu added.Even though Dr. One and UNFPA were initially concerned about the perception of drones—especially considering their frequent military use, as well as their cargo of birth control materials—the program has very well received.

So positively received that countries such as Rwanda, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Zambia, and others offered to not only take charge of the Dr. One system but pay for it as well.

A few obstacles to overcome

While there has been surprising governmental and community support, and for the most part the technological side of things is easy and off-the-shelf, that doesn’t mean that the program doesn’t have more than a few difficulties to deal with.

One of the largest is education. After all, getting birth control devices and drugs to a community is one thing, explaining their use is quite another.

Speaking to NPR, Rosalijn Both, who has done work on contraception in Africa, lays out the issue:

“If contraceptives and other reproductive health commodities are simply dropped in remote areas without health education materials in the local language, I would be surprised if the impact would be big.”

The sky’s the limit

Yet the promise of Dr. One, as well as extrapolating drone shipments to other regions and countries, has proven to be more than solid.

The program even shows potential for being useful in everything from bringing “…ballots after elections, or exams for school,” Sunkutu added. “It becomes a logistics management solution for hard-to-reach areas. We’re going to use family planning as an entry and make it sustainable.”

Despite our current growing pains with the idea of drones, it’s important—as with all technological innovations—to try to keep an eye on the concerns but also stay open to the benefits.

They might be annoying to some, or even scary, but without a doubt drones are bringing contraceptives and healthcare support to people who otherwise wouldn’t have access—and, in the future, may even do the same to millions more.

Image sources: Andrew Turner

M. Christian

M.Christian (they/them) loves nothing better than exploring the intersections of sex and technology—and speculating on the future of both. A highly regarded erotica writer they have six novels,12 collections, 100+ short stories, and 25 anthologies as an editor to their name. Their non-fiction regularly appears in many sites, but they're most proud of being a regular contributor to Future of Sex.

Of their erotic fiction, Tristan Taormino said that “M.Christian is a literary stylist of the highest caliber: smart, funny, frightening, sexy—there's nothing [they] can't write about… and brilliantly.”

Reflecting their unique ability to sympathetically and convincingly write for a range of genders and sexual orientations, their stories have appeared in multiple editions of Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, The Mammoth Books of Erotica, and others. Their collection of gay erotic fiction, Dirty Words, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award.

While a majority of their stories have been collected into books like Dirty Words, their fondness for combining sex and science fiction is clearly evident in collections that include Rude Mechanicals, Technorotica, Better Than The Real Thing, Skin Effect Effect, Bachelor Machine, and Hard Drive: The Best Sci-Fi Erotica of M.Christian.

As a novelist, M.Christian’s versatility is on full display with Running Dry, The Very Bloody Marys, Brushes, Painted Doll; and the somewhat controversial queer BDSM/horror/thrillers Finger's Breadth, and Me2.

M.Christian has worked on the industry’s production side as an Associate Publisher for Renaissance E Books and as a Publisher for Digital Parchment Services. The latter dedicated to celebrating the works of science-fiction legends such as William Rotsler, Jerome Bixby, Jody Scott, Arthur Byron Cover, Ernest Hogan, and James Van Hise.

Covering topics like BDSM safety, sexual education, senior sexuality concerns, queer and gender issues, plus reviewing a variety of sex tech products, M.Christian’s non-fiction has appeared on sites like Kinkly, Tickle.Life, Sexpert, Queer Majority, Sex for Every Body, and—of course—their ongoing work for Future of Sex.

If there’s anything M.Christian enjoys more than writing, it’s teaching. A featured presenter, sometimes with their friend Ralph Greco Jr, at national sex and BDSM events, they have lectured on kink play (with an emphasis on safety), polyamory, boosting sexual creativity, and erotica writing--for beginners or those wanting to go pro.

M.Christian is a cohost on two popular sex-education podcasts: Love’s Outer Limits with Dr. Amy Marsh and Licking Non-Vanilla with Ralph Greco, Jr.
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1 comment

  1. Eric Hilary Smith 6 June, 2016 at 01:05 Log in to Reply

    That is a great interception by a drone sexbot

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