Drones for GoodAccording to an ITU article, the Ministry of Health and UNICEF launched a pilot project in 2018 to use drones to transport vaccines to children on remote rural islands. The article says about 20 per cent of children in Vanuatu miss routine vaccinations because their villages are hard to reach.
The government contracted two drone companies, Swoop Aero and Wingcopter, to deliver temperature-sensitive vaccines to 39 remote villages that health workers would ordinarily need days to reach. UNICEF reported that on 18 December 2018 a Swoop Aero drone carried vaccines almost 40 kilometres across Erromango island, from Dillon’s Bay to Cook’s Bay, a community without a health centre, where a nurse vaccinated 13 children and five pregnant women.