When we discuss barriers to healthcare in the developed world, affordability is commonly the biggest concern. But for some in the developing world, physical distance and topography can be the difference between life and death.
Widjifake, a hard-to-reach village in northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with a population of 6,500, struggles with having consistent access to healthcare supplies due to the Congo River and its winding tributaries.
It can take up to three hours for vehicles carrying supplies to reach the village.
Widjifake's struggle is just one of many in a country fraught with healthcare challenges.
"The coverage rate for routine immunization in DRC is extremely low and the Ministry of Health has declared a health emergency to work to improve it," said Dr Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, according to SUAS News.
"Coincidently, DRC is experiencing an unprecedented series of deadly disease outbreaks, which are all symptoms of poor coverage, weak health systems, lack of infrastructure, and broader health issues in the country," Berkley continued.
The DRC has worked to solve this health care crisis by launching a campaign called New Generation Supply Chain program or Nouvelle Génération des Chaînes d'Approvisionnement (NGCA). One of the major goals of the NGCA is to reach remote populations in villages such as Widjifake with vaccines and medical supplies.
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One solution they were eager to test is transporting supplies via drones.
On August 8, the Ministry of Health, VillageReach, Swoop Aero, and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, came together to make the first successful delivery of medical supplies to Widjifake via drone.
The drone's vertical take-off and landing capability allowed it to easily traverse the DRC's dense jungle and raging rivers to drop down in a clearing at a health center in the village.
The first drone, launched in Mbandaka, took just 20 minutes to travel 40 kilometers (25 miles) to Widjifake and delivered the vaccines at their proper temperature to ensure maximum efficacy.
On the drone's return trip, it brought back lab samples, data collection forms, and requests for medicines needed to Mbandaka.
Most of the villagers in Widjifake has never seen a drone before and marveled as it took to the sky.
[ia_video https://s3.amazonaws.com/roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms/runner%2F14129-Drone%2Blift%2Boff%2Bfrom%2BWidjifake.mp4 source="https://s3.amazonaws.com/roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms/runner%2F14129-Drone%2Blift%2Boff%2Bfrom%2BWidjifake.mp4" autoplay=true feedbacks=true shortcode_id=1568069596608 expand=1 ]On the first day, the drones managed four successful round-trip test flights to deliver a three-month supply of vaccines which were administered to children that day.
Over the next five days, the drones would complete another 50 round-trip flights.
The DRC's Ministry of Health were impressed by the delivery and see drones as a way forward in the battle to increase healthcare access.
"The Ministry of Health welcomes this innovation that facilitates the transport of vaccines and other essential health products through drones to overcome accessibility challenges in Equateur's hard-to-reach communities. This will bring essential health care closer to the population in order to improve universal health coverage," said Yuma Ramazani, Secretary-General for Health, DRC.
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The next big challenge for relief workers is making sure medical supplies are available to be transported.
"Rivers, forests, and difficult roads can be the first barriers to accessing basic health services. If people overcome these geographical barriers, they may find another: a health center without vaccines or essential medicines," Emily Bancroft, CEO of VillageReach, said.
"We believe drones have significant potential to create the responsive, people-centered supply chains that will ensure access to health care for under-reached populations," she continued.
While drones aren't a cure-all the multitude of healthcare problems in the DRC, they've proven to be an effective, safe, and affordable way to bring isolated populations the medical supplies they desperately need.
Olivier Defawe from Drones for Health says the next step involves securing financing for drone programs so they can be expanded.
"As with any viable solution, the need exists to secure continued funding for a long-term investment that would enable its full integration into the health system," Defawe told VillageReach. "Once we secure ongoing capital, all systems are go."
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.