A drone powered instant drugs logistic delivery service centre has opened in Ogoja local government area of Cross River State, southern Nigeria.
The centre, known as Zipline Drone Distribution Centre, which has been designed to bring health care delivery closer to the people living in rural and hard-to-reach areas, was commissioned by the governor of Cross River State, Sir Ben Ayade.
Governor Ayade, while performing the ceremony at Ndok in Ogoja local government area said that the establishment of centre was part of his administration’s initiative to reduce mortality particularly in hard-to reach areas.
Ayade was accompanied by his wife, the deputy governor, Professor Ivara Esu and the APC governorship candidate,) Senator Bassey Otu and his running mate, Peter Odey, as well as other candidates of the party.
“In other to have optimum value for our pharmaceutical factory, we needed to partner with Zipline for the major supply of our drugs. Zipline core business is essential supply of drugs and logistics services.
“This particular center in Ogoja will be serving over 300 health centres. Our primary healthcare structure will therefore reinvigorate and answer to all challenges of our people.”
Fast delivery
According to Ayade, the centre would provide a fast and catalytic relationship between the state government’s health insurance agency code-named AyadeCare and Zipline company.
The governor noted that as part of the synergy, “Zipline therefore will be our logistics consultant to receive drugs for our supply chains. So Zipline will deliver drugs to our primary health centres and other sensitive localities and even private health centres.
“Zipline will Provide support systems to deliver quality drugs, which will pass the quality control systems. With Zipline, a journey that would have taken more than eight hours to deliver sensitive items like drugs, can now be delivered in 30 minutes. We have moved a little from water and drone to the air delivery system.
“I want to use this opportunity to tell Cross River state people that this is one of the beautiful things our administration has brought. This is a clear difference from a bimodal system to a digital matter,” Ayade further said.
Similarly, the General Manager of Zipline Nigeria Limited, Mrs Catherine Obiaze, said her company has brought a unique and cutting edge technology that would deliver real time, on time delivery of drugs to areas hitherto inaccessible.
She thanked the governor and the Cross River State government for the partnership, adding that the project had a hundred percent local content in terms of engineers behind the scheme.
Earlier, the Commissioner for Health, Dr. Janet Ekpenyong, described the commissioning of the centre as an outcome of a mandate by the governor to her and her predecessor to understudy similar feats in Ghana. She thanked Ayade for his vision, which she noted berthed the drugs delivery centre.
