The UPS Foundation, California-based robotics company Zipline and Vaccine Alliance, Gavi, are actively exploring the use of drones to deliver medical supplies, with the Foundation providing an $800 000 grant to support the initial launch of the initiative in Rwanda.

Later this year, the Rwandan government will begin using the drones, which could make up to 150 deliveries a day to 21 blood transfusion facilities located in the western half of the country.

According to the World Health Organisation, Africa has the highest rate in the world of maternal death due to postpartum hemorrhaging.

While Rwanda’s national drone network is initially focused on the delivery of blood supplies, the plan is to expand the initiative to include vaccines, treatments for HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and many others.

“The inability to deliver life-saving medicines to the people who need them the most causes millions of preventable deaths each year. The work of this partnership will help solve that problem once and for all,” says Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo.