Just dropping in...
A DRONE designed to deliver takeaways to students is now being used to get vital medication and supplies to isolated elderly people who are cocooning.
The Manna Aero service in Moneygall, Co. Offaly, should have been dropping off its first takeaway orders around a Dublin university campus by drone in March, but then the coronavirus pandemic shut the country and its pilot programme down. Within a week, the drone company was testing out an entirely different concept – delivering critical supplies to vulnerable local residents who have to remain indoors.
In Moneygall, locals are running a dedicated phone line rather than an app so that vulnerable residents such as Fidelma Gleeson, 70, can order bread and milk, and have her prescription medicines brought to the door.
Ms Gleeson said: ‘It means an awful lot to me.
‘I thought I’d never see the day that that would happen, that I wouldn’t have to be getting into my car and going into town to collect it.’
The Covid-19 project is personal to Bobby Healy, chief executive and founder of Manna Aero, which has a staff of 23. ‘My mother is 76 years old. If she was in Moneygall, I have no doubt whatsoever she would be constantly going up to the shop and putting her life at risk,’ said Mr Healy.
‘If we’re asking elderly people to do something really difficult, we should do everything we can to make that easy for them. We wanted to do something small but meaningful that would be representative of what the future might look like either in an extended lockdown or a repeated lockdown,’ he added.
‘Small but meaningful’