Forty minutes by air instead of days by boat: Uganda's medical drones reach the island clinics

For families on Uganda's Buvuma and Kalangala islands, a lab result could mean days of waiting — samples travelled to the mainland by boat, and medicines came back the same slow way. That changed this week, when the Ministry of Health launched medical drone flights from the National Public Health Laboratory at Butabika: the first flight carried a full 15-kilogramme load of testing kits and essential supplies to the Koome Islands and on to Kalangala Town Council, then flew laboratory samples back on the return leg. The drones carry up to 15 kilogrammes and make the trip in about 40 minutes. The flights will show whether drone transport should join the national sample network that moves samples from clinics to laboratories across the country.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: institutional program