An Island Nation’s Health Experiment: Vaccines Delivered by Drone

New York Times

In the village of Cook’s Bay, on the remote side of the remote island of Erromango, in the remote South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, 1-month-old Joy Nowai was given shots for hepatitis and tuberculosis that were delivered by a flying drone on Monday.

It may not have been the first vial of vaccine ever delivered that way, but it was the first in Vanuatu, which is the only country in the world to make its childhood vaccine program officially drone-dependent.  

“I am so happy the drone brought the stick medicine to Cook’s Bay as I don’t have to walk several hours to Port Narvin for her vaccines,” her mother, Julie Nowai told a Unicef representative. “It is only 15 minutes’ walk from my home.”

Even paradise can be tough on vaccinators. Vanuatu is an archipelago of 83 volcanic islands. Many villages are reachable only by “banana boats,” single-engine skiffs that 12-foot waves sometimes roll over or smash into cliffs. Other villages are at the end of mountain footpaths that become bogs when it rains, which it does a lot.

Read the rest here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/health/vanuatu-vaccines-drones.html

3 thoughts on “An Island Nation’s Health Experiment: Vaccines Delivered by Drone

  1. isn’t that interesting…such a remote place and such concern for ‘the children’ they would go to the expense of flying the vaccines in to the island

    three words jump out: ‘EXPERIMENT, VACCINES, and UNICEF

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