There are myriads of factors that affect the delivery of emergency supplies in Africa. Some of these factors include traffic and inaccessible roads amongst others.
Zipline, a California-based drone delivery service may have unearth an innovative solution to surmount these challenges. The solution is to employ drones to deliver these emergency supplies.
Ghana is one of the few countries that has embraced the solution with the launch of Zipline’s drone delivery service in the West African country.
Zipline will deliver medical supplies to around 2,000 medical facilities, helping over 12 million people in Ghana. 12 routine and emergency vaccines will be available, including shots for yellow fever, polio, measles, meningitis and tetanus, as well as 148 blood products and other critical medicines. The drones fly autonomously and can carry up to 1.8 kilograms of cargo.
Zipline’s new operation in Ghana is supported by non-profits, GAVI and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as companies like UPS and Pfizer. Each delivery is initiated when medics place an order by text message, drones will then fly from one of four distribution centres, hover over its destination, and deliver the package with a small parachute.
Since it’s inception in 2016, Zipline has made over 13,000 deliveries of blood products in Rwanda – a third of them attributing to emergency life-saving situations. The company opened its first distribution centre in a town located around the Southern province of Rwanda, called Muhanga approximately 45 km from Kigali the country’s capital.
The Zipline service will help prevent vaccine stockouts in health services in health facilities as well as during national immunization campaigns
“The ability of the Government to supplement routine immunization on demand will allow us to make sure that there will always be enough life-saving vaccines for every child in Ghana,” said Dr Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. “This is an exciting development for Gavi that is ultimately going to ensure we leave no one behind and help us protect more children living in remote areas against vaccine-preventable diseases,” he added.
