Zipline drones deliver vaccines to malaria-prone western Kenya

Villagers in the lush flatlands of the Muhoroni region of Kisumu County in western Kenya have been growing accustomed to the once-eccentric whine of a drone zipping across the sky on its way to drop life-saving cargo at Tama Health Centre.

Josephine Opiny recalls her exhilaration when she and other mums first witnessed a drone delivering vaccines at the health facility, writes Joseph Maina for VaccinesWork, a digital platform hosted by Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance. That day, Opiny had brought her infant Matthews, then six weeks old, for immunisation.

"It was my first time to see a drone,” Opiny told VaccinesWork during a visit to the health centre in July. “I couldn’t make out its mission until I learned from the nurses that the drone delivered the vaccines my son received a few moments later. It was an exciting spectacle and startling too.”

That day, baby Matthews got doses of pentavalent, pneumococcal, rotavirus, and oral polio vaccines – several of which had been recently airborne.

"The region’s infrastructure and the distance between health facilities and vaccine depots make the drone the fastest, safest, and most viable option for last-mile delivery. Before the commencement of Zipline’s drone deliveries to Tama, nurses here needed to undertake a two-hour return trip by motorbike to fetch the vaccines, the larger part of the journey navigating bumpy murram roads littered with jagged rocks. The going was necessarily slow. The nurses often found long waits at the sub-county headquarters, which added to lost time."

This assignment also meant that either Henry Ochieng – one of the health centre’s two nurses – or his partner would be out most of the day, leaving just one nurse in the facility, the report added. "The advent of drone deliveries, in other words, means the facility is better equipped to attend to patients’ various needs."

The swiftness of drones also means that patients can get much-needed jabs on demand. In one of Ochieng’s most memorable experiences, a family once showed up seeking measles vaccines for their children but not a dose was available in the health centre.

"Ochieng knew he had to act. Fast. From his experience at the health centre, he surmised that if the patients didn’t receive the vaccines that day, they would likely not return for the jabs if given an appointment for another day. I asked them to sit down and then I promptly contacted the sub-county EPI coordinator and placed a request for the measles jabs. The EPI coordinator contacted Zipline, who immediately dispatched a drone with the vaccines. About ten minutes after placing the call to my senior, I received the vaccines and administered them to the patients.”

These days, Ochieng says, children don’t leave the facility without getting the vaccine they came for. “There is no way that a mother can bring her child to the health centre and fail to get it vaccinated,” says Ochieng. “Even in an instance of vaccine shortages in the centre, we only need to contact Zipline, and the delivery is done swiftly.”

Besides routine vaccines, Zipline also delivers anti-rabies prophylactic vaccines on demand. In one case, a mother frantically rushed her son to the health centre one night after he was bitten by a rabid dog, Ochieng recalled.

“I called Zipline, and they sent the drugs immediately. It was around 9pm. I treated the patient and released him. They eventually followed the remaining treatment schedule, and the boy is now well.”

The Tamu case reflects several of the challenges that Zipline identified and set out to address with its airborne vaccine delivery programme.

“We have realised that there are some facilities that are manned by one person,” says Sineka Samuel, Customer Success Manager, Africa Sales, Zipline. “That means that whenever the health worker goes to pick vaccines, they end up locking down the facility, thereby denying any other service for their patients. In such instances, when Zipline comes in, then that one staff member doesn't have to leave. We are delivering the vaccines in real-time.”

Everything works like clockwork at the Zipline K-1 facility where staff dutifully receive and promptly process orders for vaccine deliveries to health facilities in four Kenyan counties, often reaching remote and underserved areas in record-breaking time.

“Our orders are very time-sensitive,” says Eunice Kariuki, Fulfilment Operations Lead, Zipline. “Between confirmation to the teams, order packing and dispatch, we work with a timeframe of around three to five minutes for packaging and another three to five minutes for dispatch. It’s usually very fast-paced.”

Upon dispatch, Kariuki says it takes three minutes for the drone to reach the nearest health facility served by Zipline, and 73 minutes to reach the farthest.

The K-1 has been in operation since February 2022. Besides vaccines, the facility also deals with four other products: blood, medical, consumables and animal cryonics. “Currently, we serve Kisumu, Nyamira, Homa Bay and Kericho counties of Kenya,” says Samuel.

The success of the vaccine delivery programme in the four counties has attracted interest from other counties, which have expressed interest in adopting the service to increase their reach, particularly for remote regions, Samuel added.