Healthcare Magazine November 2017 | Page 8

INSIGHT
LAST AUTUMN , SAN Franciscobased robotics company Zipline teamed up with the Rwandan Ministry of Health to launch the world ’ s first drone delivery system operating on a national scale .
Dropping urgent blood supplies to transfusion clinics across the country , Zipline ’ s drones embarked on a mission that sees them saving thousands of lives in an area not renowned for either its medical infrastructure or its ease of access .
In 2018 , Zipline will build on the success of its Rwandan operation by expanding into Tanzania , but for this particular service , the tech firm will seek with help from supply chain specialists LLamasoft .
The Michigan-based LLamasoft is a global leader in supply chain optimisation technology and it will draw on its experience of previous supply chain projects with the Tanzanian Ministry of Health , to enable Zipline to maximise the benefit of their integration into the public health supply chain of Tanzanian , just as they did in Rwanda .
With 12mn people living in an area the size of Switzerland , Rwanda is the most densely populated country in mainland Africa . The route to many of its 478 health centers is via unpaved , perilously steep , winding roads that might appear on an episode of Top Gear . The infrastructure is so poor that some roads simply disintegrate while the mountains can be notoriously impassable . The same can be said of Tanzania , where only 3,704km , of a total of 88,200km , of highway is paved , making deliveries by vehicle in either country , not only immensely time-consuming , but treacherous , too – particularly during the biannual rainy season during which some roads are completely washed away .
8 November 2017