Delivery of medical supplies by drones to remote or hard-to-reach areas in Kaduna State will commence in October 2021, officials of Zipline, the company that will provide the service have confirmed.
The officials promised that the Pambegua delivery site, the first of three facilities from which the service will operate, will be ready by then, adding that training of personnel has commenced.
Speaking to reporters over the weekend, Mr Samuel Akuffo, Zipline’s Operations Lead in Ghana, added that the training of personnel will speed up the actualization of the project.
‘’The project aims to deliver supplies 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from three distribution centers—each equipped with 30 drones—and deliver to more than 1,000 health facilities serving millions of people across Kaduna State.
‘’Bottlenecks like bad roads, expiry of products due to overstocking, unavailability of medical commodities at health facilities during emergencies and products not getting to remote areas, will all be minimized when Zipline’s facilities commence operations,’’ he promised.
It will be recalled that Kaduna State Government and Zipline signed an MoU in February 2021 to revolutionalise the supply of medical consumables to health facilities and the response of medical personnel to emergencies, before the end of the year.
KDSG had promised that it will overhaul medical supplies, in collaboration with Zipline which operates the largest medical drone supply facility in the world at Ghana.
The government promised that the use of technology is ‘’part of the government of Kaduna state’s bold vision of using drone delivery to establish universal, seven-days-a-week access to lifesaving and critical medicines for most of its more citizens over the coming years.’’
Emphasizing this commitment, Mr Akuffo said that Zipline will also create jobs in Kaduna state, apart from providing the immediate benefit of reducing fatalities and expanding access to routine and emergency supply of medical consumables.
‘’A lot of people from the community will be employed in line with Zipline’s policy. The company will only look outside where there is no available manpower within the community,’’ he added.
‘’Right now, there are lots of people from Kaduna state who are in the Academy. They will form the nucleus of our operations when our sites are ready, especially the one at Pambegua,’’ he added.
