Nigeria: Zipline Pushes the Frontiers in Medical Supply Chain With Drone Delivery

13 October 2022

With its drones or "unmanned aerial vehicles" (UAV), Zipline is filling key supply chain gaps, providing much-needed access to medicine, medical supplies and vaccines.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), nearly two billion people across the world lack reliable access to quality essential medical products such as blood and vaccines due to gaps in supply chains and poor infrastructure.

A functioning supply, appropriate warehousing, and end-to-end transportation, are critical to making sure that people have access to essential, quality medicine. Increasingly, drones or "unmanned aerial vehicles" (UAV) are being used to fill in key supply chain gaps, providing much-needed access to access to to medicine, medical supplies and vaccines.

By storing medicine, blood and other critical medical supplies and delivering them directly to health facilities, Zipline is helping the government of Ghana reduce wasted medication resulting from overstocking and expiration. Because health facilities can order on-demand, as needed, they no longer have to request large quantities of medicine from their national medical stores to make sure they have them in stock, ultimately resulting in over-ordering and expiration.

AllAfrica publishes around 400 reports a day from more than 100 news organizations and over 500 other institutions and individuals, representing a diversity of positions on every topic. We publish news and views ranging from vigorous opponents of governments to government publications and spokespersons. Publishers named above each report are responsible for their own content, which AllAfrica does not have the legal right to edit or correct.

Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica. To address comments or complaints, please Contact us.