ACU Dec-18 Final LR

GLOBAL NEWS
Drones deliver first vaccines to
remote island in Vanuatu
Drone use in Africa
gaining momentum
PORT VILA, VANUATU: One in 5
children in the remote Pacific islandnation
of Vanuatu is not fully
immunized but that's changing with
its government and UNICEF teaming
up to use commercial drones to reach
even the farthest village in this
archipelago.
In a world's first, UNICEF and
Vanuatu’s Ministr y of Health
successfully delivered via commercial
drones vaccines for anti-hepatitis and
tuberculosis for children in Cook's Bay,
a small scattered community with no
health center or electricity accessible
only by foot or small local boats
known as banana boats.
Tucked in styrofoam boxes with icepacks
and temperature logger, the
vaccines were transported last
December to Cook's Bay using
commercial drones from Australia's
S w o o p A e r o a n d G e r m a n y ' s
WingCopter, both specialized in
delivering supplies in hard to reach
areas.
The drone operators were selected
after a bidding process and agreed
not to be paid if they failed to deliver
the vaccines.
Covering a 50-km flight over
numerous islands and way points, the
vaccines reached its destination which
would have otherwise been extremely
difficult due to its remote location.
Henrietta H. Fore, UNICEF Executive
Director, the project is a big leap in
their goal to reach out to the remotest
places on earth.
“With the world still struggling to
immunize the hardest to reach
children, drone technologies can be a
game changer for bridging that last
mile to reach every child,” she said.
Miriam Nampil, a registered local
nurse, she had experienced extreme
difficulty serving the Cook's Bay
community and the drones are
extremely helpful to attend to their
medical needs.
“It's extremely hard to carry ice
boxes to keep the vaccines cool while
walking across rivers, mountains,
through the rain, across rocky ledges.
I've relied on boats, which often get
cancelled due to bad weather,” said
Nampil, the nurse who injected the
world's first drone-delivered vaccine.
”As the journey is often long and
difficult, I can only go there once a
month to vaccinate children. But now,
with these drones, we can hope to
reach many more children in the
remotest areas of the island.”
Vanuatu's government says it will
integrate drone delivery of vaccines
into its national immunization and
other health programs.
JOHANNESBURG: The use
of commercial drones is
gaining momentum in Africa's
three leading
industries—agriculture,
mining and renewable energy,
according to the German
company Microdones.
Established in 2005 in
Germany, Microdones has set
its sights on Africa which is
seeing a significant impact on
the use of drones and
integrated solutions in
growing businesses connected
to those three industries.
Hanno Truter, Sales
Manager for Microdrones
Africa, said the continent has
a lot of potentials
economically and drones
could be used to unlock them.
In Microdrones news blog,
Truter explained unlike other
territories, Africa is very much
different mainly because of its
sheer size and scope.
“First of all, let me give you
a bit of perspective on the
actual size of Africa,” explains
Truter. “If you look at it from
South to North, you're talking
about 8,000 kilometers and
from East to West about 7500
km. North America, China,
India, Eastern Europe, Spain,
France, Germany, Switzerland
and Japan all can fit into
Africa itself. So that's quite a
vast area to cover.”
But because Africa remains
underdeveloped there are
many challenges in different
fronts. For one, only 28
percent of African countries
have regulations in place with
drone use because many
governments consider drones
as aircraft and should be
handled as such.
Truter says drone use in
Africa also faces
technological, economic,
social and legal challenges.