Series: Energy and Health in Low-Income and Middle-Income Countries, The Lancet Global Health, Volume 14, Issue 4e626-e639April 2026.Open access. Reliable, affordable, sustainable, and equitable electricity access in health-care facilities is fundamental to achieving universal health coverage. Decen ... tralised renewable energy systems coupled with battery storage present a key opportunity to rapidly expand access to reliable electricity, particularly for remote facilities where grid connection is unavailable and as a backup for facilities with unreliable power. In this Series paper, we discuss several measures and policy options for accelerating health-care facility electrification, including strengthening monitoring and standardising indicators for electricity services at health-care facilities, prioritising and increasing equitable investment in energy infrastructure for health-care facilities, strengthening coordination between health, energy, and other sectors, building local capacity to instal, operate, and maintain energy systems at health-care facilities, and developing and disseminating energy-efficient biomedical equipment suitable for harsh conditions. more

Emergency medicine in Rwanda is underdeveloped. Limited training and infrastructure mean that the country has a high mortality rate from acute conditions such as trauma, malaria and obstetric complications. As Rwanda's disease burden shifts, there is a critical need for standardised emergency care. ... This Emergency Medicine Clinical Guideline (EMCG) provides essential protocols and principles that are tailored to the Rwandan context. The aim is to improve the delivery of emergency care at district and referral hospitals. It is intended as a practical resource for all healthcare providers involved in the management of undifferentiated emergencies. more

Rwanda’s mountainous topography makes ground transportation of medical supplies unreliable — some roads stretching into rural areas remain uncared for and unpaved. Between 25 and 40 per cent of all temperature-sensitive medical supplies sent from urban centres to rural health clinics are wasted ... because of an unreliable cold-chain infrastructure. Rural clinics are also often subject to stockouts, and patients in need of specialized blood products, drugs and other supplies are unable to acquire them. Zipline, a US-based health logistics company, aims to address the issue of access to medical supplies, largely leapfrogging traditional modes of transportation and various obstacles. Zipline uses drones to deliver blood and other routine and emergency medical supplies from distribution centres to district hospitals and rural health centres. Although the company has been celebrated in the media for its operations, there is little scholarly work on its operations and performance. This has led to some confusion over its scale. We aimed to gain insight into the details of Zipline’s business model, including the infrastructure, regulations and government support that make Zipline possible, and to understand its impact on health outcomes in Rwanda. Our work was entirely based on published materials since our research was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. more