Medical delivery to remote communities can be difficult, especially over vast continents like Africa and in 2016 a few ways to resolve this issue were starting to be brought up with the use of drones.
In 2016 Rwanda became the first country in the world to deliver blood and essential medicines to rural hospitals with the drone company Zipline, a San Francisco based company. Since then, there has been an increase in the amount of countries using drones for medical purposes. In fact, the worlds first drone delivery of COVID-19 vaccines was in March 2021, in Ghana.
Ghana turned to Zipline to distribute COVID-19 vaccines to rural healthcare facilities. 11,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines were distributed within 3 days, which made up 13% of Ghana's total vaccine administration during that time. Ghana now has around 18.7% of the population fully vaccinated which is about 5.81 million people.
Drones were first envisioned for aerial and military use, now the narrative is changing with drone usage within the healthcare industry, drones have the possibility of giving people the access to high quality healthcare anywhere in the world. They can be built to carry delivery packages to set locations, which makes it possible to deliver many medical supplies as they follow the route to the area that is needing the supplies.
Medical drones usually have enhanced cameras, sensors, lights to support communicational needs and a unique navigation system, although the underlining features of the drones are no different to commercial use ones.
Since the successful use of drones in Rwanda and Ghana, we can see the use of medical drones expanding around the world. A few countries have been finding ways to do the same, these countries include India, Malawi, Japan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Vanuatu, Israel, and the United States (to name a few)
Drones are able to speed up the medical diagnostic process and improve care pathways. In Vanuatu the use of drones first began in 2018 when organised by the Vanuatu Ministry of Health and the Australian Government, in collaboration with UNICEF (the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund) the use of drones were there to aid local healthcare workers and deliver thousands of essential childhood vaccines across the 83 islands that make up Vanuatu. These drones have been life changing in Vanuatu as supplies and medicines were typically delivered first by boat and then by foot to the remote villages and communities.
In 2019 Malawi also started to introduce drones to supply childhood vaccines to start with, these vaccines were for malaria, TB, and rotavirus. Soon enough, COVID-19 vaccines were added to the list to deliver to communities. Then, in January 2022, Malawi was struck with Hurricane Ana, which caused a spike in cases of cholera as communities were swept under water. The drone company, Swoop Aero began to take photos of the event for the World Health Organisation. In March and April of this year drone suppliers began distributing polio vaccines.
Another active drone provider in Malawi is Wingcopter which travelled over 40,000 km in 9 months during 2021-2022. Which is equivalent to a trip around the world. Both companies confident that they will continue to successfully deliver medical supplies.
Collaborations between governments, drone companies and organisations can offer more available treatments to the areas that lack these benefits, which is about half of the world's population. The use of drones within the healthcare industry have been successfully helping people who have limited access to healthcare, improving the care quality that is accessible to individuals, significantly reducing waiting times especially in remote areas and connecting hospitals with patients.
Find out more about the changes being made in the Health and Social Care HERE
