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Posted on Tuesday May 28th, 2019
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Innovative Uses
UAV technology facilitates the diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis in Madagascar
An international team of health sector investigators is piloting a new health care delivery system using a "surgical strike" approach to solving pandemic problems.
Researchers from Western University, the Pasteur Institute of Madagascar, Stony Brook University (New York) and the Swiss Institute of Tropical Health and Public Health conducted the first global test for the use of drone technology to support the diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis (TB) in a remote region of Madagascar.
With funding from the Stop TB Partnership, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Government of Canada, the team spent much of 2017-18 testing the ability of drones to take patient samples from patients. more than 50 villages to bring them to medical centers. . The drug is then airlifted for patients who test positive, again using drone technology. A personalized "pill box" is used to deliver a personalized medication, which is digitally monitored to ensure compliance with the prescribed treatment.
This methodology has the potential to "outpace" the extreme infrastructure challenges that prevail in remote places, such as the Vatovavy-Fitovinany region of Madagascar.
"In just a few hours, the drone makes an extremely difficult logistical and economic journey for many villagers, especially if they are sick. These are villages that are only accessible on foot, with no ambulance service. Getting to the nearest hospital since a remote part of Madagascar can take days and, if a person is sick and his or her escorts have no family close to the hospital, this travel can cause significant expenses, "says Elysée Nouvet, medical anthropologist of Western School of Health Studies, who previously led global health projects in developing countries of Central and West Africa. ;Where is.
Nouvet has been invited to lead the study of cultural acceptability of this potentially revolutionary tuberculosis diagnosis and treatment program. The protocol of this study of cultural acceptability is described in the highly reputed British Medical Journal.
As part of a global movement for digital health technology, remote monitoring and disease surveillance, Nouvet believes that this surgical typing approach needs to be explored further to determine best way to properly manage the customs and potential concerns of people living in remote communities. There is also the issue of sustainability and technology control: can such global programs be developed and managed at the local level?
"Many pieces of this puzzle are in the making as new drone-supported health programs are being implemented around the world," says Nouvet. "Who knows, maybe testing and treatment provided by drones will become a new standard for northern First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities in Canada." The anthropologist's job in all of this is to s & # 39; Ensuring that technological optimism does not hide the questions to be asked about the social impact and acceptability of new technologies on the ones they are supposed to support. "
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