Zipline’s medicine-ferrying drones can reach speeds of up to 100 Km/h.
Rwanda, dubbed the “Land of a Thousand Hills”, is a country in Africa known for its verdant beauty with rolling plains and looming mountains. However being blessed with such a diverse terrain has proved to be challenging with situations such as medical aid being inaccessible to patients in remote areas. Furthermore, most hospitals are not large enough to store medication that patients might require, and the fact that the region is also prone to road-damaging rainfall often worsens the situation.
A California-based robotics company called Zipline thinks they may have the solution to Rwanda’s problem: delivering medication using drones. To start, the company will partner with the Rwandan government to deliver blood to 20 hospitals and health centers across the nation. The system for requesting medical products using this service is being built to be easy: all that is required is a text message from a health worker asking for the desired amount of blood.
"Our long-term goal is to deliver the entire medical supply chain. So we plan to deliver vaccines, rabies prophylaxis, anti-venom, oxytocin as well as a whole host of other medical products that hospitals might have run out of," said Keller Rinaudo, CEO of Zipline.
At present, Zipline has a fleet of 15 drones. Each drone weighs about 13 Kg and can carry a payload of 1.5 Kg, in this case blood. Each aircraft can make a round trip of 150 km at a speed of 100 km/h, where the entire fleet is expected to make between 50 to 150 flights per day.
The company expects to expand its service to include more critical medical products across the country, including vaccines, anti-venom serums and more.
Zipline along with global logistics company UPS and GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization) are also currently looking to replicate the delivery service model across other countries.
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 "Meet Zip, Drones, Zipline, Rwanda")
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