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The world’s first and only nationwide drone delivery service, Zipline, today began delivering COVID-19 vaccines to selected health facilities in its service area in Ghana.
This makes Ghana the first country in the world to deploy drones nationwide to deliver COVID-19 vaccines.
On February 23, the COVAX facility shipped 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine, from the Serum Institute of India (SII) in Pune, India, to Accra, Ghana. The arrival in Accra is the first batch delivered worldwide by the COVAX Facility in an unprecedented effort to deliver at least 2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines to low- and middle-income countries in by the end of 2021.
The government of Ghana will use Zipline’s network to deliver its COVID-19 vaccines to ensure rapid and equitable access across the country. Almost half of Ghana’s population lives outside of cities, and those 12 million people are hard to reach with time-limited, cold chain-dependent vaccines. Zipline’s network provides Ghana with a resilient, efficient and equitable distribution strategy.
“We are proud to be a part of this milestone in Ghana, where our drone logistics network is able to provide on-demand, large-scale, last mile delivery of COVID-19 vaccine across the country,” said Zipline CEO and co-founder, Keller Rinaudo. “Not only does this make Ghana the first country in the world to deploy drones nationwide for the delivery of COVID-19 vaccines, but it is also a gigantic effort to ensure equitable access and enable Ghana to use fully its health care infrastructure to deliver vaccines. ”
Zipline Africa Vice President Snr Daniel Marfo said: “It is without doubt an exciting time for Africa. We are leading the way in using revolutionary drone technology to deliver medical supplies and vaccines on-demand to our populations who need them most. For many countries, equitable distribution nationwide – especially in remote and hard-to-reach areas – is a daunting challenge. But in Ghana, the established health infrastructure and existing Zipline network make it possible to deliver to these areas quickly and safely. ”
“We are honored to do this with our key partners, the Ministry of Health, the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and the UPS Foundation. With this intervention, we believe that Ghana will be able to distribute the vaccine as quickly and fairly as possible, ”said Zipline Ghana Managing Director Naa Adorkor Yawson.
Vaccines are transferred to the Zipline distribution center by UPS, which also provides in-country ground delivery support to regional government cold stores. Once the vaccines arrive at the Zipline distribution center in Mpanya in the Ashanti region, they are then dispatched on demand to health facilities in the region. The Asuofua Health Center was the first to receive COVID-19 vaccines via Zipline drone delivery, and in the coming days, other health facilities and dosing centers will be added as indicated by the Health Department of the Ghana.
Zip line and Ghana partnership and response to COVID-19
Ghana first partnered with Zipline in 2019, setting up its on-demand logistics service in four strategic locations to cover around half of the population and some of the most difficult-to-reach areas in the country. Since 2019, Zipline Ghana has made over 50,000 deliveries, distributing over 450,000 medical products. Zipline distributed nearly a million routine vaccine doses in 2020 alone.
In April 2020, Zipline began delivering COVID-19 test samples to Accra and Kumasi. It was the first time in history that autonomous drones were used to make regular long-range deliveries to densely populated urban areas. It was also the first time that drones were used in this way to deliver COVID-19 test samples.
In December 2020, Ghana also deployed Zipline to quickly distribute Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to Ghanaian election officials for the presidential election. Within 24 hours of receiving the government’s request for assistance, Zipline began delivering PPE and, in less than 48 hours, PPE across the country, allowing polling stations to open safely and to hundreds of thousands of Ghanaians to vote.
How the zip line works
Each week, a single Zipline distribution center – a combination of a medical treatment warehouse and a drone airport – is able to deliver more than two tonnes of temperature-controlled drugs on demand to any point in the world. a service area of nearly 8,000 square miles. Each plane can travel 100 miles round trip, in strong winds and rain, day or night, to make on-demand deliveries in an average of 30 to 45 minutes. Zipline drones have traveled more than 5 million autonomous kilometers to deliver more than 1.5 million doses of vaccines, units of blood and essential and life-saving drugs to more than a thousand healthcare facilities serving more than 25 million people in three countries. In the United States, Zipline has partnered with a leading healthcare system, Novant Health, on the country’s first drone logistics operation by a hospital system for a pandemic response. To date, Novant Health has used Zipline to distribute over 18,000 units of PPE by contactless drone to frontline medical teams around Charlotte, North Carolina. Zipline recently announced that it will soon be launching medical delivery services in Nigeria’s Kaduna State as its footprint grows across Africa. Zipline is preparing to use its existing and planned distribution capacity in Rwanda and Nigeria to distribute the COVID-19 vaccine.
About Zipline
Zipline is the world’s only nationwide instant drone delivery service. Its mission is to provide every human on Earth with instant access to vital medical supplies. Zipline designs, assembles and operates its unmanned aircraft system in the United States and is progressing towards FAA type certification for its drones and air carrier certification for its US operations. The world’s most respected investors back Zipline including Temasek, Baillie Gifford, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, GV, The Rise Fund, a global impact fund managed by TPG, Katalyst Ventures, Toyota Tsusho Corporation and Stanford University .
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