Nigeria

World's first-ever drone delivery of COVID-19 vaccines begin in Africa

Wednesday, March 03, 2021 at 5:49 PM by Jerrywright Ukwu

- Access and availability of critical and life-saving medicine for millions of citizens has been made easier

- The distribution of COVID-19 vaccines is not left out in recent innovative ways of reaching people

- Africa is now witnessing first-hand how technology can make access to health care easier

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The world’s first and only national scale drone delivery service, Zipline, on Tuesday, March 2 began the delivery of COVID-19 vaccines to selected health facilities within its service area in neighbouring Ghana.

This makes Ghana the first country in the world to deploy drones on a national scale to deliver COVID-19 vaccines.

To ensure fast and effective distribution, the government of Ghana will use Zipline’s network to deliver its COVID-19 vaccines to ensure rapid, equitable access across the West African country.

World's first-ever drone delivery of COVID-19 vaccines begin in Africa — Ghanaians are already receiving the COVID-19 vaccines with ease. Photo credit: @zipline
Source: Twitter

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A statement seen by Legit.ng quoted the co-funder of Zipline, Keller Rinaudo as saying:

"We are proud to be part of this significant milestone in Ghana where our drone logistics network is able to provide on-demand, last-mile delivery of COVID-19 vaccine at scale across the country.

“Not only does this make Ghana the world’s first country to deploy drones on a national scale for the delivery of COVID-19 vaccines, but is also a giant effort in ensuring equitable access and enabling Ghana to fully utilize its healthcare infrastructure to deliver vaccines.”

Recall that the Kaduna government and Zipline, recently announced a partnership that will witness the use of a logistics network of autonomous delivery drones to help transform access and availability of routine and emergency medicine for millions of people in the northwest state.

Legit.ng gathered that the new service will use drones to make on-demand deliveries of hundreds of different vaccines, blood products, and life-saving medications.