On the third and final day of the Africa Health Agenda International Conference 2019 (AHAIC 2019), after hearing the inspiring story of Africa’s first and only drone delivery company – Zipline – and the sensational outcomes they have been having, many of the conference participants had registered for a tour of the company’s first premises.
In the time it took to travel the 51km from Kigali to Muhanga where the country’s first Zipline office is located – about an hour and half – a blood bag delivered by drone from Muhanga to Kigali hospitals will travel with Zipline’s drones at least twice as fast as it would go by road. In addition to the speed advantage, the marginal cost per delivery is low and their drones perform well even during bad weather.
Zipline, whose business model is based on being paid only for the cost of delivery of biomedical products, are helping Rwanda overcome the universal challenge of supply chain and logistics in health. Strong and efficient supply chains have the power to improve health outcomes such as immunization coverage and survival rates in emergent conditions. This is already being seen in Rwanda and results of reductions in maternal mortalities is being reported in the 21 general hospitals that are currently being supplied with blood products by the company.
The blood and blood products supplied to hospitals by Zipline supplies are obtained from the central blood bank – the Rwandan National Blood Transfusion Service – and using real-time information and monitoring, they are able to supply the hospitals both a routine quantity of blood needed and also handle rapid blood supplies during emergencies like postpartum hemorrhage and road traffic accidents.
The drones can travel only 80-120km from the Muhanga station thereby limiting the number of hospitals the company can supply to. In order to reach the more hospitals in remote Eastern Rwanda, the company has established a new station in the east of Rwanda. In addition, the company is hoping to address supply chain challenges for other biomedical products asides blood and blood products such as vaccines and medications. They are also currently looking into starting up in other African countries.
