How delivery by drones in Africa saves thousands of lives

Recently, for the first time in the United States, Wing (formerly Google X), which plans to deliver goods by drones, was given the status of an air carrier. In the meantime, a similar service is already successfully operating in much more difficult conditions! In impassable forests and sweltering heat. Something that truly saves the lives of thousands of people every day. At the end of April, Zipline launched its service in Ghana — drones, who massively brought medicine to hospitals across the country. The new service relies 12 million people. For such a system, there is hope, maybe the future in the regions of Russia.

All over the world, cars are most commonly used to deliver vaccines, medicines, and tests — both to patients and between medical centers. They carry temperature-sensitive samples and drugs, blood, organs for transplantation, and everything that works only for a few hours. If a car with such a load gets stuck in a traffic jam or off-road, the load may become unusable. Even worse, if the delivery goes to disaster areas, when the bill goes for a minute. There is no direct road there - it is flooded, destroyed or goes through forest fires. Even if rescuers can't get close to people, what is the chance for an ambulance or medication?

Therefore, in this area, even more actively than in the case of goods, delivery is developing with the help of drones. The fact that it may be a little more expensive than a truck full of dumps is not important here, the main thing is speed, accuracy and throughput. Drones can be used in countries and regions where there are no roads at all. They allow the delivery of fragile and time-sensitive cargo.

A few years ago, a test program for the delivery of medicines and blood samples by drones was launched in Rwanda. And now, after several years of testing, the same startup, Zipline, is expanding to another African country with similar problems, Ghana. The plan is to save at least several hundred thousand people in the coming years.

How it works

Zipline, a drone developer from San Francisco, has been improving its system in Rwanda for three years, modifying drones and finding ways to scale the project. Last year, they created the Zip 2 - the drone that Time made on its list of "The Best Inventions of 2018". The site in Rwanda is now sending blood products to 25 hospitals located in the most inaccessible areas of the country. Zipline was able to reduce the delivery time from two hours to 20 minutes, and thus reduce the number of damaged goods by 95%.

Now the project goes to a whole new level. Supported by the government of Ghana, Zipline will manage 30 drones from four distribution centers. They will deliver emergency daily vaccines, blood and life-saving medicines to 2,000 clinics and hospitals across the country.

The founder of Zipline Keller Rinaudo in an interview with journalists says:

We will make 600 departures per day, delivery - for 12 million people. Our goal is for every patient to be in 15-45 minutes from any product he needs, however rare it may be.

Nana Akufo-Addo, President of Ghana, who attended the Zippline drone’s first launch ceremony, said:

No one in our country should die because the blood or medicine was delayed on the way to the hospital. Therefore, we run such a delivery service. You all, wherever you live, have the right to life-saving medicines.

Zipline drones deliver more than 150 emergency vaccines, drugs and blood packs for transfusion. Coverage in the future - up to 22 million people. This is the world's largest drones delivery system. She was even impressed with Bill Gates, one of the main initiators of vaccination projects in Africa.

Zipline uses a fleet of autonomous drones - Zips, which take off from bases called Gnezdami. Each Nest can store up to 15 Zips. The launch is made by a catapult, navigation is carried out by GPS. The device weighs 10 kg and can carry up to 1.5 kg. Medicines are dropped with a parachute attached to a special point near the hospital (accuracy - within a few meters). When returning to the base, the drone clings to the wire stretched in the air, which acts as an anchor and lands the drone on a pillow spread on the ground. The range of each vehicle is more than 120 km (60 km there, and 60 km back).

The Zipline contract is for four years, Ghana will pay for every successful departure. The total cost of the project will be about $ 12.5 million. According to the company's website, almost 14,000 deliveries have already been made .

The company has plans for the future - for example, to help avoid thousands of annual pregnancy-related deaths, which are completely preventable if donated blood is delivered in time. Also recently, researchers have found that drones can deliver organs for transplantation: during transportation, the tissues are not damaged. Companies are going to expand their activities and obtain work permits in other countries (in the United States must be given in the coming months) in order to permanently change the medical products delivery industry.

Successful examples

Zipline was founded by Keller Rinaudo in 2014. Since then, a startup has raised $ 41 million from investors such as Google, Sequoia, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang. The company develops its own drones, launch and landing systems, as well as logistics software.

Rinaudo says:

The economy here is very simple. We use small, electric, fully autonomous machines for the purpose of sending the necessary things. It is simply more efficient than the analog method of delivering such items.

Earlier, a similar project (only on a much smaller scale) earned in Switzerland: an autonomous network developed by Matternet allows drones to deliver medicines, blood samples, biological materials and other goods between hospitals in some major cities.

Their main innovation is the Matternet Station. When the drone lands, this station fixes it, charges it and unloads the contents (people can place and pick up cargo, gaining access using QR codes). In addition, in such stations there are mechanisms for regulating the routes of drones. According to the head of the company, Andreas Raptopoulos, in the cities of Switzerland, the autonomous network allows drones to deliver drugs within 30 minutes. At the same time, there are not too many drones working there either: just one or two per station.

In late March, in cooperation with the same Matternet, the American UPS delivery service launched the same system in the United States. While the delivery works only in the city of Raleigh (North Carolina). UAVs run on a predetermined route between hospitals and medical centers. Matternet drones carry payloads weighing up to five kilograms over a distance of up to 20 kilometers. For the time being, this system is used in addition to regular car delivery.

At the same time delivery by drones is surprisingly safe. Testing of the same Wing from Google in the United States showed that it is several orders of magnitude safer for people than courier delivery of goods using a car. In the course of the research, more than 70 thousand test flights and more than 3000 test deliveries to the thresholds of houses were conducted - without a single unforeseen situation or accident. Birds drones avoid (wingspan at Wing - 1 meter!), And in case of loss of control, they can safely land on the spot.

Such drones could be useful in Russia. Their “all-passing" is ideal for remote areas and our off-road. Decent hospitals in many villages and even small towns are no longer there, and drones can help with the delivery of vaccines and medicines, and even organs for transplantation. How do you like this idea? Moreover, a couple of days the Ministry of Transport proposed to allow free flights of UAVs in Russia at an altitude of up to 150 meters.

However, in the United States, according to the Wall Street Journal, in the next couple of years, federal authorities do not expect mass licensing of such a delivery service. Some problems remain unresolved. Including - noise, privacy and the need to manage a new type of air traffic. If drones in the air become a mass phenomenon, behind which companies stand, additional rules must be established for them to avoid collisions, conflicts and other unforeseen situations.