Texas Rural Areas Will Have More Accessible Healthcare Soon

Adrian Billings, M.D., Ph.D., TTUHSC School of Medicine associate academic dean of rural and community engagement, said, “We’re at the southern terminus of US 67, a very isolated community of about 5,000 to 6,000 residents with limited access to healthcare services.”

“From Presidio, residents are 90 miles away to the nearest emergency room in the United States and two miles to the Mexican health care system, which has a lot more health care resources to offer than on this side of the Rio Grande. We are literally at the end of the road," said Billings.

The eight-foot by nine-foot drone had its forest flight last week. The drone traveled round-trip several times from Alpine to Presidio which was a total of 74 miles each way.

This was the first and longest medical mission in the U.S. by Australian-based company Swoop Aero, which provided the drone technology, technical support and pilot training.

Linda Molinar, Presidio County Medical Clinic (PCMC) said that having a drone during the COVID-19 pandemic would have made it easier to gather supplies and medicine.

“We were number one in the state for vaccinations for several months, but that required…someone from my staff to drive for more than 10 hours,” said Molinar.

Billings said, “We are physically on the frontier and we’re pioneering this new drone technology to attempt to improve access to care for these very remote patients.”

Future tests will measure the impact on the materials the drone carries, such as vaccines, medications, medical supplies and blood and tissue samples, and the drone itself, including maintenance, programming and flying it.

Can You Guess These Towns From Their Satellite Photos?

I'm always down for a good brain challenge. This one however got the best of me.

It's always a fun time looking up address or cities and seeing them from a satellite point of view. You start pointing out landmarks and things you recognize.

One thing you don't account for however is something looking bigger or smaller than you seemed to think it was. So we started grabbing a bunch of these satellite pictures of cities and towns around Amarillo.

As we looked at them, we thought to ourselves, "how fun would this be to actually have to GUESS what these places are?". So away we went.

Go ahead and try to see how many you can guess correctly!