Health Ministry partners Fly Zipline to save lives using drones

The Ministry of Health through the Ghana Health Service has partnered Fly Zipline Ghana Limited to use drones for the delivery of emergency health and blood products to public health facilities in remote communities in the Ghana during emergencies.

According to the Ministry of Health, the move is to tackle challenges with the supply of medicines and other services to rural areas which are difficult to access by road.

Elaborating on the need technology to facilitate the work of health providers, the Director General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Nsiah Asare, said the use of drone technology is critical to achieving universal health coverage.

“In Ghana, the major cause of maternal mortality is due to haemorrhage. Most of our women come in very anaemic which we are also trying to prevent,” Dr. Asare said.

He detailed that the drones will be operating on 24-hour basis within all four distribution centres in the country which are yet to be selected by the Ministry.

Reacting to claims by some members of the Minority caucus in Parliament, that the cost involved was too much, Dr. Nsiah Asare said, the acquisition of the drones comes at no cost to the government and, therefore, adding that the assertion only four drones will be operating nationwide is false.

“Health so far as some of us are concern is not politics. You can sit here are do everything with politics but when you’re sick, you don’t show your party colour,” he stressed.

He said the first distribution centre will be around Suhum in the Eastern Region which will serve about 30 hospitals, 19 maternity homes, 60 health centres, 13 district hospitals and 300 CHPS centres within the Ashanti, Brong Ahafo and parts of the Volta Region

“We are still working on the other three distribution centres which will cover the Central, Western and the other remaining regions,” he said.