Medical drone operators, Zipline, has received commendations for its support to Ghana’s fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.

The company, through its assistance in delivering Covid-19 samples to Noguchi and Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research (KCCR) for testing, has brought lots of relief to many health facilities within their operational areas.

Narrating the gains made as a result of this intervention, the Director of Health Services for the Suhum Municipality, Dr Frederick Kwame Ofosu, says Zipline has been of tremendous support to the directorate since its opening in April 2019.

“Particular mention for commendation is the support we have received during this COVID-19 pandemic. At the beginning of the pandemic, we were spending a minimum of ¢200 to deliver just one sample to Noguchi.

"With Zipline's service, however, the Municipality has not spent any money on transporting Covid-19 samples to Noguchi. This has been a huge relief to the Municipality in terms of cost and speed of transporting these samples to Noguchi.”

The company has since delivered about 3000 samples from the Omenako and the Mpanya distribution centers.

The Country Manager of Zipline, Mr. Daniel Marfo said, “It’s been, truly, exciting hearing the many positive stories we continue to receive on a daily basis from our partner health facilities.

"During this pandemic, for example, inasmuch as it was not our core mandate to deliver Covid-19 samples, we thought our expertise in delivering medical commodities in record time to health facilities could easily be leveraged in the transport of these samples for testing.

"This made us to quickly write to the required authorities for clearance to assist. We have since been in this fight together by deploying the world’s biggest medical drone delivery system to deliver samples to test centres for prompt tests. This is the first time a drone is being used to deliver such samples across the entire world”.

Aside from the delivery of Covid-19 samples, Zipline has also assisted government in the delivery of Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) to health facilities in the hard-to-reach areas.

Gloves, nose masks, sanitizers and other protective wears are being successfully delivered from the Vobsi distribution centre across the North East Region.

“In addition to this support, we continue to deliver essential medical commodities to health facilities from all our distribution centres.

During this period, our services have become much more critical as it helps to reduce the human movement in transporting these medical commodities to health facilities. And of course, this is our primary mandate to which we remain highly committed to,” Mr Marfo said.