The elastic is released and with a hiss launches the drone skyward. The small plane that takes off knows where to go and when to release the load in its belly. A package the size of a cookie box glides gently to the ground, slowed by a paper parachute. Coronavirus vaccines have arrived in one of the most remote villages in Ghana.
If even a country like Italy sees the problem of vial distribution as a headache, what should an area with poor infrastructure like Africa do? In Accra they decided to board the most advanced frontier of technology, using drones. Helped by Gavi – the Alliance to Bring Vaccines to Developing Countries, the Ups Shipping Company Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Drone Drone airline Zipline, which is headquartered in California – Ghana started distributing 2.5 million doses aboard electric aircraft of a couple of meters, fully automatic, on February 26th.
From Accra airport, thanks to UPS refrigerated trucks, the vaccines are transferred to four airports in the country, where drones await them ready for take-off. The system is already oiled: it has been working since 2019 and has so far delivered to villages more than a million doses of vaccines for diseases other than Covid, blood bags, emergency medicines, gloves and masks to protect themselves from the coronavirus.
Since the pandemic began, drones have also taken the opposite route, bringing swabs from the most remote areas to cities with testing laboratories. But since the arrival of the AstraZeneca and Oxford vaccines in the country, at the end of February, a package covered with insulating material to maintain the temperature of the fridge (2-8 degrees), containing 25 ampoules, equal to 250 doses. In three quarters of an hour the drone travels up to 100 kilometers away. Arrived at the goal, he descends in altitude and opens the small hatch under his belly. A paper parachute helps to cushion the thud of the fall. In line, with their arms uncovered, the villagers summoned for the occasion are already waiting for the injection.
Ghana is receiving two and a half million vaccines thanks to the Covax program, also sponsored by the World Health Organization. It is a fund that receives contributions from the richest countries, buys vaccines and distributes them in 92 low-income countries, with the aim of immunizing at least 20% of the population in each of them. AstraZeneca’s vaccine was also chosen for its ease of transport: it needs to be kept between 2 and 8 degrees.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, an Ebola vaccine that needs to remain at minus 80 degrees (such as Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna’s Covid vaccines) had nevertheless managed to reach its destination in the villages of North Kivu, where an outbreak had broken out. thanks to very advanced refrigerant thermos. They are called ArkTek, they cost $ 2,000 each and can keep up to 500 doses at minus 80 degrees for a week. They too, the result of cutting-edge technology, can be enlisted to distribute vaccines against Covid in Africa.
.