On 24 April 2019, Zipline launched a medical supply delivery programme in Ghana. The company has already undertaken similar projects in Rwanda and Tanzania,- according to the Zipline’s website it had made more than 13,000 life-saving deliveries to date, having flown over 1 million km.
According to a Zipline press release
“Today, during World Immunization Week, President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana officially launched the world’s largest medical drone delivery service during an inaugural ceremony in the city of Omenako, site of the first of four Zipline drone distribution centers in the country.
“The revolutionary new service will use drones to make on-demand, emergency deliveries of 148 different vaccines, blood products, and life-saving medications. The service will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from 4 distribution centers—each equipped with 30 drones—and deliver to 2,000 health facilities serving 12 million people across the country. Together, all four distribution centers will make up to 600 on-demand delivery flights a day on behalf of the Government of Ghana. Each Zipline distribution center has the capacity to make up to 500 flights per day.”
“Zipline’s commercial partnerships with Ghana and Rwanda are expected to help save tens of thousands of lives over the next several years. Zipline is hard at work catching up to demand to expand drone delivery services to developed and developing countries across Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Americas throughout 2019, including the United States. Zipline is working with the U.S. state of North Carolina to launch its medical drone delivery as a part of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) UAS Integration Pilot Program (UASIPP) in Q2 of 2019.”
