A new drone service in Ghana will be capable of carrying medical supplies to remote corners of the West African country.
The American company Zipline International and the Ghanaian government launched the first of four distribution centers on Wednesday.
Eventually, the network will be able to deliver medical supplies on demand to health workers within about 30 minutes.
Ghana’s vice president Mahamadu Bawumia said he hoped the partnership would open the way for other investors in the country’s health sector.
Each of the four distribution centers will be capable of making up to 500 flights a day, Zipline said. Health workers will be able to text the service for delivery of items ranging from vaccines to blood products.
A pair of non-profits, GAVI and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as several companies including the parcel delivery firm UPS and the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer all joined forces to get the service up and running.
Up to 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, GAVI said.
Zipline said a similar but smaller project had made more than 13,000 deliveries of blood products since it was launched in Rwanda in 2016 – about a third of them for emergency life-saving treatment.
