The Rwandan government will soon use drones to deliver life-saving blood supplies and rabies vaccine to health workers in the western half of the East African country.
The effort is part of an innovative collaboration between Zipline, a California-based robotics company; Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; and UPS. The partnership could help save lives around the world.
In areas where maternal death due to postpartum hemorrhaging is a critical problem, and where there is a risk of contracting rabies, the blood, plasma and rabies vaccine that the Zipline-made drone will deliver in Rwanda later this summer is greatly needed.
Rabies being a time sensitive infection that urgently needs attention could now be quickly attended to with the drone carrying vaccines thus reducing the amount of fatalities. Because Rwanda already has a strong health system and a strong health supply chain; it serves as a perfect pilot ground for this innovation, and according to the team at Gavi, other remote areas would be implemented for drone deliveries as soon as the Rwanda operations are totally successful.
While UPS aims to answer questions around cost effectiveness, storage and cold temperatures, Zipline would be working on their drones and Gavi would be doing more research on the vaccines and blood. All three companies are coming together to so something truly sustainable- bringing good health and wellbeing to humanity.
Information culled from Longitudes
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