Now, less than a year after launching its drone delivery service in Rwanda, Zipline is preparing to expand the program to a new market with a greater variety of medical products.
In the pilot program in Rwanda, Zipline’s drones were only able to deliver blood products to healthcare facilities. But in 2018, the company will expand its service to nearby Tanzania and begin delivering other products such as anti-malarial drugs, sutures, IV tubes and vaccines as well. Zipline’s new territory will cover more than a thousand healthcare facilities serving 10 million people in Africa’s sixth most populous country. Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo believes that his company’s on-demand services can greatly improve access to emergency medications such as snake bite anti-venom in the remote communities of Tanzania. Because these drugs must be carefully kept in a temperature-controlled environment, they’re rarely stocked in Tanzania’s rural hospitals. Instead, snake bite-victims must sometimes wait hours for a truck to deliver anti-venom from the nearest city. Zipline’s drones will be able to deliver anti-venom much faster, giving patients a better chance at survival. For more routine medical supplies, Zipline hopes to supplement Tanzania’s existing supply chain with its drones as well. This could be immensely helpful in case of a malaria outbreak in a particularly remote area, for example. If the program in Tanzania is successful, Zipline may further expand its operation to other countries in Africa and elsewhere.