Drones to deliver blood, medicine
U2 frontman and activist Bono has worked on many causes — tackling famine in Ethiopia, campaigning for third- word debt- relief, raising awareness on the AIDS pandemic to putting an end to climate change.
This time, Bono has partnered with the Philippine Red Cross ( PRC) to launch Zipline, a drone delivery service capable of making on- demand and within minutes emergency deliveries of life- saving blood and viral medicines to hard to reach areas.
The rock star recently joined Zipline as a board member. During the signing ceremony with the organization’s chief executive officer Keller Rinaudo and PRC Chairman and senator Richard Gordon in Mandaluyong City on Tuesday, he put his seal on another cause — promoting drones to deliver blood and medicines to remote areas.
The PRC and Zipline said more than 2 billion people worldwide have no access to medicines because of last-mile transportation difficulties.
“This is especially true in the Philippines, where just over half of the country’s close to 105 million people live in rural areas across more than 7,000 islands,” it added.
Bono said it angers him when “regular people can’t get access to life-saving intervention.”
“Music is my passion, but actually Zipline is [the venue] where all my other passions come together — which is the idea that commerce serve people [and] not people serve commerce, the idea that the brightest of minds shine even brighter when they work for the vulnerable lives,” he said.
Launched in 2016, Zipline is an American medical product delivery company that designs, builds and oper
ates drones, initially delivering blood to 21 hospitals in Rwanda.
Zipline co-founder Rinaudo said: “[ W]e knew that robotics was going to have a big impact on logistics; we knew that technology is getting to a point that it is possible to build an automated logistics systems that can serve all humans equally. And we thought, if we are going to do that we really need to focus on healthcare first.”
According to Rinaudo, there are 5.5 million children who die each year because they have no access to basic medical products, including blood.
He said universal access to health care “is a human right.”
Bono said the initiative was requires the help of government and other sectors.
“I saw up close what it was to not get access to lifesaving antiretroviral drugs.
I saw that, I felt that ache. I felt that space between the need and the supply of that need and I agree… that where you live should not decide whether you live,” he said.
Antiretroviral drugs are used to treat HIV.
Zipline has entered into partnerships with Ghana and India. In the Philippines, it seeks to start with the delivery of blood and to eventually expand to include over 150 critical and life- saving medical services.
“Zipline will bring to the fore in this disaster-prone country an opportunity for us to be able to bring our blood in areas that are very difficult to handle,” Gordon said.
Using a network of autonomous drones to do the delivery in the initial three
distribution centers to be set up in the Visayas, the 24/7 service is expected to be launched early next year.
Health workers can text their orders and can receive their deliveries within 30 minutes.
Gordon said one distribution center would be set up in Cebu and another in Iloilo. The centers are expected to expand to Mindanao to respond to conflict and disaster situations in Sulu and Basilan, among others.
The drones can carry 1.8 kilos of cargo, fly up to 145 kilometers an hour with a round trip range of 160 kilometers in high winds and rain. Meanwhile, each Zipline distribution center can deliver to an area of more than 20,000 square miles to serve up to 12 million people.