Let the Drops begin!!

We are all very excited about our first full fledged health education drop run. After 18 years of working to get the approvals and change regulations we’ll finally be taking healthcare to rural villages.

The ground Team: Michaela, Ben, Rex and Melissa have gone to a rural community to monitor the in-community reactions to the first set of drops. They will arrive there later this afternoon and spend a night in the village ready to share and document the first drop tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile the volunteer pilot, Patricia Mawuli and her student and co pilot Lydia Wetsi, are preparing the aircraft, bags, and materials for the drop.

Tomorrows run will be to 20 rural villages earlier identified by the queen mothers as target communities. The first contact materials being prepared include an introduction, a small questionnaire and some telephone credit for the community health rep to call us.

We’re often asked why we wish to use small aircraft for these runs. The ground team, traveling by road, will spend around 3 hours getting to first drop site. By comparison total flight time for this initial run to all 20 communities will take just over one hour in our Rotax powered CH701. Attempting this trip would require more than a week difficult travel by road, and would still not reach all 20 communities.

These first drops are more about first contact and relationship building. Future drops will contain more community specific health education materials and training invitations.