Drone delivery service provider, Zipline, has launched its service in Ghana. Zipline drones will serve up to 2,000 health facilities and 12 million people in Ghana.
The US-based automated logistics company, will use drones to make on-demand, emergency deliveries of high priority products including emergency and routine vaccines and other health products.
The Zipline drone network will be integrated into the national healthcare supply chain in Ghana and will help prevent vaccine stockouts in health facilities as well as during national immunisation campaigns. Logistics will be managed through Zipline’s hardware and software systems in each of the distribution centres, and deliveries will take place at hospitals and health clinics. UPS will provide technical guidance and consultancy services as needed, in consultation with Gavi and collaboratively with Zipline.
Zipline will be running at a capacity of 150 deliveries per day scalable to 500 per day after it is launched fully. The deliveries of about 150 medical supplies, which include blood, blood products, and vaccines among others, will serve about 2000 health facilities across the country at full capacity.
The Government of Ghana is building on the success of the partnership between the Government of Rwanda and Zipline, facilitated by Gavi and supported by philanthropic grants and in-kind support from The UPS Foundation, which pioneered just-in-time drone delivery of blood products to hard-to-reach clinics in Rwanda.
According to Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo said in a statement; “No one in Ghana should die because they can’t access the medicine they need in an emergency . That’s why Ghana is launching the world’s largest drone delivery service…a major step towards giving everyone in this country universal access to lifesaving medicine.”
The programme, which began in Rwanda in 2016, enabled access to life-saving medical supplies in minutes rather than hours for millions of Rwandan citizens in remote communities. The Government of Rwanda has since expanded the program across the country, making more than 13,000 deliveries to date. Zipline drones now deliver more than 65% of Rwanda’s blood supply outside of the capital, Kigali.
