Drones save the day in Yellow Fever vaccine campaign in DRC

LogisticsUpdateAfrica

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Drone technology continued to serve the remote and hard-to-reach health facilities and communities in Africa, this time for a Yellow Fever immunization campaign

Drones save the day in Yellow Fever vaccine campaign in DRC

Drones were used by the Democratic Republic of Congo government, WHO, UNICEF along with VillageReach and its technology partner Swoop Aero and other donors in achieving a mass Yellow Fever immunization campaign across Equateur province in north-east DRC. Olivier Defawe, the Director of Health Systems at non-profit VillageReach spoke to Lakshmi Ajay, Logistics Update Africa on the exercise

What is the Yellow Fever vaccination campaign and its objective? What is the size and scale of this initiative?
The Yellow Fever vaccination campaign was almost a month-long campaign in Oct-Nov 2021 organized by the DRC Ministry of Health (Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI)) with support from WHO and UNICEF. To accomplish the campaign target of vaccinating 90% of the population (ages 1-60) in Equateur province, the provincial government reached out to VillageReach to seek help reaching remote and hard-to-reach villages using the existing drone delivery network.