The largest drone delivery network in the world and a Silicon Valley start-up Zipline will be delivering number of medicines, life-saving vaccines and blood to patients in Ghana. On Wednesday, the global vaccine alliance GAVI said that Zipline’s afresh drone medical delivery service will benefit whopping 12 million people in Ghana in the biggest breakthrough of its kind.
What will Zipline offer?
Zipline would be transporting as many as 150 dissimilar medicines, vaccines and blood to over 2,000 clinics in remote parts of Ghana. It is pertinent to mention that the Silicon Vallery start-up instigated to deliver blood in Rwanda in 2016 through pilotless and preprogrammed aircraft.
The Chief Executive Officer of Zipline, Keller Rinaudo said in a statement:
“What this is going to show is that you can reach every GPS co-ordinate, you can serve everybody. Every human in that region or country [can be] within a 15-25 minute delivery of any essential medical product — it’s a different way of thinking about universal coverage”
Zipline will also be offering up to 12 routine and emergency vaccines along with shots for yellow fever, polio, measles, meningitis and tetanus. Furthermore, 148 blood products and other critical medicines and vaccines would also be available.
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How will the system work?
As soon as the supplies start to run dry, the medics will place orders through text message. Subsequently, the team behind the start-up will get notified and they would dispatch the medicines and through a drone. A drone will fly to the desired destination from four distribution centers. Thereafter, the drone will hover over the preferred medical center before releasing the supplies through tiny parachutes. The drones could carry up to 1.8 KGs of cargo.
While speaking to the reporter in a telephone briefing, Chief Executive Officer of GAVI, Seth Berkley said:
“The idea is that these four distribution centers can make up to 600 on-demand delivery flights a day. And that can expand up to 2,000 (a day) over time”
The officer further added that the deliveries may not take more than 30 minutes. Therefore, treatments like anti-snake venom or rabies shot would be arriving just in time to prevent any loss of the life.
Image Source: Guardian
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