Drones for Social Good

In December 2018, the story of one-month old Joy Nowai— the first child to be given a vaccine delivered commercially by a drone— turned the world’s attention to the small South Pacific country of Vanuatu. A drone covered 40 kilometers of rugged mountainous terrain and flew through wind gusts to finally deliver the vaccine to a remote health post in Dillon’s Bay, where 13 children and five pregnant women were vaccinated.

Four months into Vanuatu’s drone delivery trials UNICEF has supported the Ministry of Health to reach almost a thousand children and 100 pregnant women who live in remote communities. In a country where 1 in 5 children are not fully immunized, drones have been able to reduce a journey of several hours into just 25 minutes to safely transport the vaccines from distribution centers to rural vaccination posts. In May of this year, the second stage of the Vanuatu’s drone delivery trials will come to an end, and it will be time to plan the scale up of this initiative.