China's Chengdu launches low-altitude blood transport service

Chengdu, capital city of southwest China's Sichuan Province, launched low-altitude blood transport services to provide critical support for patients in urgent need on Thursday.

Two fully loaded drones took off from the Chengdu Blood Center on the day, heading toward the Chengdu Second People's Hospital and the First People's Hospital in the city’s Longquanyi District.

Equipped with high environmental adaptability, these drones transmit real-time data, including flight position and blood temperature, back to a monitoring platform throughout the journey, ensuring safe and controlled transportation.

"The transportation time has been significantly reduced by more than 50 percent through low-altitude blood transport, which will become a routine operational practice in the future, effectively supporting responses to emergencies, critical illnesses, and ensuring the supply of blood, especially for rare blood types," said Kang Jianxun, deputy director of the Chengdu Blood Center.

Chengdu has developed 86 low-altitude application scenarios and opened 107 manned and unmanned routes, covering areas including emergency rescue, logistics, and cultural tourism. The market scale for this sector has surpassed 100 billion yuan (about 14.27 billion U.S. dollars), reflecting its rapid growth and broad potential.

China's Chengdu launches low-altitude blood transport service

The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) on Thursday lowered its key interest rates by 100 basis points, or 1 percent, the CBE reported.

The CBE said in a statement that its Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to cut the deposit rate to 20 percent, the lending rate to 21 percent, and the rate of the main operation to 20.5 percent, while also reducing the discount rate to 20.5 percent.

"This decision reflects the committee's updated assessment of inflation dynamics and outlook since the previous MPC meeting," it said.

According to an earlier CBE report, annual urban headline inflation in Egypt eased slightly to 12.3 percent in November, down from 12.5 percent in October, driven by a slowdown in food price inflation, which declined to 0.7 percent in November from 1.5 percent a month earlier.

This marks the fifth interest rate cut by Egypt's central bank so far this year.

Egypt cuts key interest rates by 1 pct as inflation slightly down