Zipline Rwanda was established in Rwanda to increase accessibility to medical products: insulin, vaccine, etc and also the blood products: red cells, platelets, cryo, etc to remote and rural locations. By the end of our expansion contract our two distribution centers will serve more than 400 facilities and represent more than 90% of the hospitals and health centers in the country. The majority of the population in Rwanda leaves in those areas and having quicker and easier access to those vital products in some of the most remote areas was a challenge that our project was able to bring a solution and it is the reason why the Government of Rwanda invested in Zipline in the first place.
We have made over 23,000 deliveries (of which 7,800 were emergencies) with over 40,000 units of medical products (of which 16,000 were emergencies). Note that since we introduced medical products (pharmaceutical products) in March this year, we have made 300 deliveries of those and delivered over 1250 medical products units. We are currently serving 24 hospitals and 20 health centers.

https://www.flyzipline.com/

• Rwanda

• Remote and rural communities

After proving the concept in Rwanda, now Zipline has launched 2 distribution centers in Ghana

Everything at a Zipline distribution center is powered by electricity, from our launcher system to the recovery system, to the aircraft itself. Our planes fly using highly efficient Smart Batteries that are both powering the plane’s flight as well as collecting flight data to be used by our team to continue to streamline our entire operation’s process. We focus on simple and efficient systems because it allows us to better serve our customers and the patients who receive our products in the end. Because Zipline delivers 60% of the blood and blood products outside of Kigali, the Rwanda Ministry of Health no longer leans on delivery vehicles as a means to supply each of the individual health facilities and hospitals in our service. In turn, the health facilities and hospitals that we serve no longer need to deploy individual vehicles to do one-off pick-ups and deliveries for their patients. With Zipline’s service, the products they need are centralized and available on an as-needed basis, with no use of ground transportation as a means to reach the hundreds of health facilities that we serve. Instead of waiting for one car to drive one individual delivery many hours away to a hospital, facilities can receive their order in as little as 10 minutes from Zipline. Our aerial delivery service is faster, more efficient, and more sustainable than traditional ground transportation delivery systems. Additionally, with a just-in-time delivery model, the hospitals and health facilities that we serve no longer need to stockpile their supplies of blood, blood products, and other medical products. Before Zipline, facilities could not consistently rely on regular deliveries from the National and Regional Blood Transfusion Centers, and would therefore over-index on their stock numbers, resulting in excessive spoilage in their supply. With Zipline, health facilities and hospitals can consistently rely on receiving their products as soon as they need it for an emergency or when they run low on their stock.

Zipline's autonomous drones have flown more than two million miles, made more than 20,000 on-demand medical deliveries, and helped to save thousands of lives in emergencies. Since launching in October of 2016 to deliver blood to 21 hospitals Rwanda, Zipline has expanded its service nationwide, putting most of the country's 12 million citizens within minutes of a life-saving delivery of hundreds of medical products at 450 facilities. Zipline is now delivering more than 75% of Rwanda’s blood supply outside of the capital, Kigali. In addition to its impact on lifesaving emergencies, Zipline’s just-in-time drone delivery has helped transform the country’s medical supply chain. To date, instant drone delivery has helped ensure that hospitals always have access to blood products, increasing the use of some blood products by 175% and reducing waste and spoilage to almost zero