United Nations, Dec 19 On a small island in the remote South Pacific, a one-month-old baby has become the world’s first child to be given a vaccine delivered by a drone, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has announced.
The state-of-the-art craft which transported the vaccine, travelled nearly 40 kilometres over rugged mountain terrain, flying from Dillon’s Bay in western Vanuatu to remote Cook’s Bay, a scattered community accessible only on foot or by small boats, where 13 children and 5 pregnant women were inoculated by a nurse.
Henrietta H Fore, the Executive Director of UNICEF said the tiny aircraft’s flight “is a big leap for global health.”
“With the world still struggling to immunise the hardest-to-reach children, drone technologies can be a game changer for bridging that last mile to reach every child,” she added.
Vaccines are extremely difficult to transport as they need to be carried at closely controlled temperatures, a particular challenge in warm places such as like Vanuatu, which is made up of more than 80 remote, mountainous islands stretching across 1,300 kilometres, with only limited road networks.
As a result, almost 20 per cent of the country’s children miss out on these essential vaccines.
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