The Cross River State government in south-south Nigeria has made plans to deploy drones for distribution of vaccines and other medical supplies in hard to reach areas.
This is part of strategies to enhance vaccinations of its indigenes against Covid-19.
Zipline, a drone serving company based in the United States of America and operational in Rwanda and Ghana, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Cross River State Government to distribute drugs and other medical essentials to the areas.
The Governor of Cross River, Professor Ben Ayade said “in ninety (90) days, we will start the delivery of essential drugs to difficult to reach areas facilitated by drone delivery systems.”
Timely delivery
Ayade, who watched a demonstration of how the drones are operated, assured the company of the state’s commitment to the qualitative healthcare delivery especially for citizens living in areas yet to experience digital technology.
“We believe that your expertise will be needed since your delivery time is about 30 minutes. We need to have them (drones) across the three Senatorial districts to guarantee that from the point of dispatch to the point of delivery, we should be able to do 30 minutes per package,” Ayade said.
The Senior Vice President of Zipline, Daniel Marfo commended the governor’s strides in the health sector and pledged, “we are most pleased with your dynamic vision of ensuring that Cross River State leapfrogs the tradition and the norms by taking a step to the future.”
Game changer
The Cross River State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Betta Edu described the drone delivery system as a game changer in the health sector due to the number of communities that would benefit from the services.
Edu, who was particularly elated that communities like Belegete in situated along Nigeria’s border with the Republic of Cameroon would begin to receive medical supplies regularly, said “we have signed a contract with Zipline, an international company to provide drone services to deliver medical supplies to very hard to reach areas in cross River state. To us, this is a game changer in our healthcare delivery system. Taking medicines and others to those communities alienated from the rest of us.”
“We have over 438 hard-to-reach communities in the state. Some are mountainous, others riverine and even the creeks. These communities are very difficult to access. Taking vaccines for immunizations and reaching our people with medical supplies on time has been challenging. So, we want to deploy the drone technology to deliver drugs, vaccines, blood products, and most importantly the COVID-19 vaccines,” Edu stated.
She explained that the intent was to achieve more than “100,000 drones’ deliveries in less than six months” noting “the start date is 90 days from today. We are going to build two hubs that would serve as delivery points.”
According to the Health Commissioner, Cross River in collaboration with the company would train interest young people in drone production as part of employment creation for the unemployed.
On the cost of engaging the company, she said, “Cross River will only pay services, which would be supplemented by a conglomerate of NGOs.”
Intensive sensitisation
Similarly, the Director General of the State Primary Healthcare Development Agency, Dr. Janet Ekpenyong said that health workers were already at the communities on intensive sensitization on the use of the drone delivery system.
Ekpenyong stated, “the agency has started community engagements to prepare the people for the services we are bringing. The state government is investing resources to fly vaccines and medical supplies to the communities and we need them to understand what the drones are and what they are carrying and why. We need the community to take ownership and work with us to deliver quality services.
“We are all working to achieve universal health coverage. This means people having equitable access and making sure they get medical supplies on time and when needed. It will also ensure that health workers would not travel often to get supplies from the cold store. It will help improve services across our primary health centres,” she added.
Confidence Okwuchi
