In Africa there is a move towards using drones to transport vaccines and medical supplies to isolated villages and communities.
VillageReach, is a non-governmental organisation that is striving to improve communities’ access to healthcare and life-saving medicines and vaccines in remote rural areas in developing countries.
Gavi is an international organisation created in 2000 to improve access to new and underused vaccines for children living in the world’s poorest countries.
They have collaborated with the ministry of health and the civil aviation authority in the DRC and have been sending medical supplies, with drones, into hard-to-reach locations. These locations are inaccessible by motorcycle or 4×4 vehicle.
It is a six-day, treacherous, return journey for health workers, serving in these remote locations, to collect vaccines and other medical supplies. Using the drones eliminates the length and danger of these journeys and ensures that the vaccine quality is not compromised by maintaining them in temperature-controlled packaging.
The drones being used can fly up to 80 kilometres at a speed of up to 115 kilometres per hour.
If the drone needs to fly 400 kilometres from the distribution centre or warehouse it stops at 5 ‘filling stations’ along the way for the battery to be changed. The technology is developing so in the future there should be fewer restrictions.
Since the drones do not include cameras privacy is not an issue, and to date, there have been no safety problems. The drones are not operating within a 15km radius of an airport.
In the future drones will be used more extensively as transport in the supply chain.
Reference: https://www.logupdateafrica.com/drones-boost-healthcare-supply-chains-freddy-nkosi-villagereach