Today, Rwandan President Paul Kagame launched the world’s first
national drone delivery service during a ceremony in the country’s
centrally located Muhanga District. Starting today, the Rwandan
government will begin using drones to make up to 150 on-demand,
emergency deliveries per day of life-saving blood to 21 transfusing
facilities located in the western half of the country.
The drones and delivery service are built and operated by
Zipline, a California-based robotics company. While Rwanda’s drone
delivery service will initially focus on blood, an international
partnership between UPS, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and Zipline
will help the country quickly expand the types of medicines and
lifesaving vaccines that can be delivered.
"Drones are very useful, both commercially and for improving
services in the health sector. We are happy to be launching this
innovative technology and to continue working with partners to
develop it further,” said Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
The Global Problem
Throughout the developing world, access to lifesaving and
critical health products is hampered by what is known as the
last-mile problem: the inability to deliver needed medicine from a
city to rural or remote locations due to lack of adequate
transportation, communication and supply chain infrastructure.
In Rwanda, postpartum hemorrhaging is the leading cause of death
for pregnant women. Blood requires storage and transport at safe
temperatures and spoils quickly. Because there are many different
blood products and no way to accurately project future needs, many
transfusion clinics do not keep all the blood they may need in
stock.
During Rwanda’s lengthy rainy season, many roads wash out
becoming impassible or non-existent. The result is that all
too often someone in need of a lifesaving transfusion cannot access
the blood they need to survive.
The Solution
Rwanda’s national drone delivery program enables blood
transfusion clinics across the Western half of the country to place
emergency orders by cell phone text message. The orders are then
received by Zipline at its at its distribution center located in
the country’s Muhanga region where the company maintains a fleet of
15 drones, called Zips.
Each Zip can fly up to 150 km round trip—even in wind and
rain—and carry 1.5kg of blood, which is enough to save a person's
life. Zips take off and land at the Nest, and make deliveries by
descending close to the ground and air dropping medicine to a
designated spot called a “mailbox” near the health centers they
serve. Zipline will make 50-150 emergency flights a day to 21
transfusion clinics across the Western Half of Rwanda and can
fulfill orders in around 30 minutes.
Rwanda plans to expand Zipline’s drone delivery service to the
Eastern half of the country in early 2017, putting almost every one
of the country’s 11 million citizens within reach of instant
delivery of lifesaving medicines.
“The inability to deliver life saving medicines to the people
who need them the most causes millions of preventable deaths each
year around the world. Zipline will help solve that problem once
and for all,” said Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo. “We’ve built an
instant delivery system for the world, allowing medicine to be
delivered on-demand and at low-cost, anywhere.”
Rwanda and Beyond
The commercial partnership between Rwanda and Zipline is
expected to save thousands of lives over the next three years.
Through this effort, Rwanda is leading the world by using
cutting-edge technology to leapfrog the absence of road
infrastructure and to provide cutting edge healthcare access to all
its 11 million citizens.
The work in Rwanda is being further supported by an
international partnership between Zipline, UPS and Gavi, the
Vaccine Alliance. Thanks to a $1.1 million grant from the UPS
Foundation, the partnership will study Rwanda’s blood drone
delivery operation with an eye towards helping the country quickly
expanding the types of medicines and lifesaving vaccines that can
be delivered.
Leveraging UPS’s extensive global supply chain and logistics
expertise, Gavi’s deep public health and vaccine knowledge, and
Zipline’s cutting edge last-mile delivery technology, the
partnership hopes to use the knowledge gained in Rwanda and export
it around the world.
UPS’s logistics expertise and resources are expected to play a
critical role in helping the partnership to expand the reach of
this important work. The company was actually able to transport the
entire Zipline system from California to Rwanda in record time in a
“Browntail” cargo plane, helping to ensure Zipline’s distribution
center could be constructed in just four weeks.
"One of the most important focus areas for The UPS Foundation is
to spark public-private partnerships that create powerful scale and
drive demonstrable impact in support of global humanitarian aid and
relief," said Eduardo Martinez, president of The UPS Foundation and
chief diversity and inclusion officer at UPS.
“The shared belief in the ability to save lives through applied
innovation, combined with Rwanda's vision, is now not only poised
to advance humanitarian logistics – and logistics as we know it –
around the world, but also to save lives. Now is when our
partnership between The UPS Foundation, Gavi and Zipline counts
most, as we see the first operational missions dedicated to
shipping lifesaving blood, and keep our eye on what the future can
bring for other life-saving commodities, as well as for other parts
of the world.”
“Drones have the potential to revolutionise the way we reach
remote communities with emergency medical supplies. The hours saved
delivering blood products or a vaccine for someone who has been
exposed to rabies with this technology could make the difference
between life and death,” said Dr. Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the
Vaccine Alliance.
“This project will also act as an important test for whether
drones are a viable way to improve targeted vaccine delivery around
the world. Every child deserves basic, lifesaving vaccines. This
technology could be an important step towards ensuring they get
them.”
Over the course of the next year, and with the support of the
partnership with UPS and Gavi, Zipline plans to expand drone
delivery services to countries across Africa and the Americas.
Additionally, Zipline recently announced plans at the White House
to expand it service to the United States, where it will serve
Indian reservations in Maryland, Nevada, and Washington State.
Media Assets:
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About Zipline
Zipline is a robotics company based in California. The
company—which includes seasoned aerospace veterans who previously
worked at companies and organizations like SpaceX, Google, Boeing,
and NASA—designs and manufactures autonomous aircraft for
delivering lifesaving medicine to the world’s most difficult to
reach places .
Zipline’s long-term mission is to build instant delivery for the
planet, allowing medicines and other products to be delivered on
demand and at low cost without using a drop of gasoline. Zipline is
supported by some of the smartest investors in the world,
including: Sequoia Capital, Google Ventures, SV Angel, Subtraction
Capital, Yahoo founder Jerry Yang, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen,
and Stanford University.
About UPS
UPS (NYSE: UPS) is a global leader in logistics, offering a
broad range of solutions including the transportation of packages
and freight; the facilitation of international trade, and the
deployment of advanced technology to more efficiently manage the
world of business. Since its founding in 1907, UPS has built a
legacy as a caring and responsible corporate citizen, supporting
programs that provide long-term solutions to community needs.
Founded in 1951, The UPS Foundation leads its global citizenship
programs and is responsible for facilitating community involvement
to local, national, and global communities. In 2015, UPS and its
employees, active and retired, invested more than $110 million in
charitable giving around the world.
The UPS Foundation can be found on the web at
UPS.com/Foundation. To get UPS news directly, visit
pressroom.ups.com/RSS or follow @UPS_News and
@UPS_Foundation.
About Gavi
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance is a public-private partnership
committed to saving children's lives and protecting people's health
by increasing equitable use of vaccines in lower-income countries.
The Vaccine Alliance brings together developing country and donor
governments, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank,
the vaccine industry, technical agencies, civil society, the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation and other private sector partners.
Gavi uses innovative finance mechanisms, including co-financing by
recipient countries, to secure sustainable funding and adequate
supply of quality vaccines.
Since 2000, Gavi has contributed to the immunisation of nearly
580 million children and the prevention of approximately 8 million
future deaths. Learn more at www.gavi.org and connect with us
on Facebook and Twitter.
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance is funded by governments (Australia,
Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy,
Japan, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands,
Norway, the People’s Republic of China, Republic of Korea, Russia,
South Africa, Spain, the State of Qatar, the Sultanate of Oman,
Sweden, United Kingdom, and United States), the European
Commission, Alwaleed Philanthropies, the OPEC Fund for
International Development (OFID), the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, and His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, as
well as private and corporate partners (Absolute Return for Kids,
Anglo American plc., The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation,
Comic Relief, the ELMA Vaccines and Immunization Foundation, The
International Federation of Pharmaceutical Wholesalers (IFPW), the
Gulf Youth Alliance, JP Morgan, “la Caixa” Foundation, LDS
Charities, Lions Clubs International Foundation, Majid Al Futtaim,
Phillips, UPS and Vodafone.
Justin Hamilton
Zipline
Justin@flyzipline.com
Glenn Zaccara
UPS
(404) 432-2758
gzaccara@ups.com
Frédérique Tissandier
Gavi
+41 22 909 29 68
ftissandier@gavi.org
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