Drones rescue community in hard to reach areas

By Yamikani Yapuwa, Mana

Tamandani Chikuni from Jiya village, Traditional Authority Ntholowa in Zomba is a happy mother of three who successfully managed to get all her children vaccinated during the polio vaccination campaign at a go.

Chikuni said she does not take for granted the fact that she took her children to Magomero Health Centre on the day the campaign started and found the vaccine readily available because the facility used to experience erratic supply of vaccine in all the previous campaigns.

“We live very far from the District Hospital and other surrounding health centres. I remember visiting our health centre only to be told that there are no vaccines even for routine immunizations.

“In those cases, I would just go back home for it is hard for me to travel to the District hospital or the other health centers because of distance. We live in a rural set up where many parents and guardians cannot afford transport fare to Zomba District Hospital,” narrated Chikuni.

Another parent, Lucy Phiri added that there were instances her child was  due to receive the routine immunizations only to find none at the health centre resulting into given future dates for her to come and check if they will have vaccines in stock.

“That used to put our children at risk as we wait for the dates and in some cases one would go on the given date only to find that the vaccine has finished,” explains Phiri.

Corroborating Chikuni and Phiri’s words, Wyson Matiki, Disease Control Assistance at the facility attested that it has indeed always been hard for Magomero to access drugs for the campaigns and routine immunization because of its topography and distance from the District Health Office.

“We have very bad roads here and the condition worsened after Cyclone Freddy making it hard for vehicles from the District to come and deliver vaccines at our facility in time.

“We also normally have issues with shortage of transport from there end. There are times that the vehicle is engaged somewhere or there is no fuel at the district.  This suffocated delivery of important supplies like vaccines during campaigns as well as routine immunizations,” said Matiki.

However, the case was different during the recent polio campaign as drones were used to deliver Polio vaccine to health centres resulting into constant supply of the vaccine during the entire campaign, thanks to United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).

Unicef adopted the innovation of Drone Driven Vaccine Campaign which saw drones delivering vaccines to health facilities that are in hard to reach areas in Zomba, Mangochi and Chikwawa Districts.

The child-centered UN agency engaged Swoop Aero to do the job thereby ensuring fast, safe and effective delivery of vaccines to facilities like Magomero and Chisi Island in Zomba as well as Makanjira in Mangochi just to mention  a few using drones.

Cold Chain and Vaccine Management Consultant for UNICEF Simon Kondowe said this made it possible for every eligible child in the hard to reach areas to have access.

“We wanted to ensure that when the child comes to the facility for vaccines, they get it right away because it is always available at that facility.

“With the approach, we did not have issues like vaccine stock outs because the drones were able to respond in time hence having consistence supply of vaccine,” said Kondowe.

On top of that, Matiki also indicated that the drones eased the transportation problem which resulted receiving vaccines and commodities in time for the Polio campaign and routine works.

“In the past campaigns, we could stay the whole day during the campaign period without administering vaccines to children as we waited for a vehicle to do the delivery.

“But the drones made our job easy. We were serving the children as they come because the vaccines were delivered on time making it available all the time.

“We had never gone a day without vaccines and we are optimistic that we will reach out to all the over 16,000 children in our catchment area by the end of the campaign since there is always constant supply,” explains the excitedly Matiki.

Operations Manager for Swoop Aero Malawi, Anne Nderitu noted that it had a good experience delivering vaccines in time and making an impact in the immunization campaign.

“We were able to deliver vaccines in three districts for this polio campaign as of Wednesday, 12 July, we had delivered 8500 doses in hard to reach health facilities in Zomba, Chikwawa and Mangochi.

“We had our drone operators based at the district hospitals who received vaccines from the Expanded Programme on Immunisation coordinators and package the vaccines in the drone.

“We put ice packs and cold chain. We package properly so that right conditions are maintained, we also have the temperature logger to track the temperature as the flight is ongoing,” said Nderitu.

She added that at the health facilities, health workers were trained to receive the drone, take out the cargo and the drone flies back to the district hospital.

On the timeliness of drones to deliver the vaccines, Bernard Ndawala, Drone Operator at Swoop Aero felt that time factor is critical especially in health care and drones are the fastest option.

“With a drone, a journey is cut short. We have been able to deliver polio vaccines to health centres which are three and half hours away from the District Hospital within 25 minutes or less.

“We have Chisi Island and for one to reach there, you need to go by road, then take a boat to the island and finally cycle to the health facility which is a long process.

“Using a drone, in less than 20 minutes, we were able to deliver vaccines therefore saving lives of children who could have been denied access if traditional transportation was used,” stated Ndawala.

He also cited another example of how they have been able to deliver vaccines to Makanjira in Mangochi within 45 minutes when initially the journey takes close to six hours when using an ambulance due to damaged roads and bridges.

Kondowe affirmed that Unicef is committed to ensuring that immunization process in the country is up to standard and supply chain system is one of  the areas that needs to be strengthened to make sure that facilities have enough vaccine at all times.

“So we are going to continue using drone delivery for future campaigns so long as we still have issues of accessibility in hard to reach areas,” he said.

He added that Unicef aims at expanding its reach to some facilities whom they have not been able to reach out to all in a bid to promote accessibility at all times.

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