No room for deadly delays

To Tamandani Chikuni, it is easier to stop a catastrophe from happening than to fix the damage.

“Prevention is better than cure,” she states.

The woman presented her four-year-old child and two other children, aged eight and nine, for polio vaccination at Magomero Health Centre in Zomba. 

She urges adults to ensure every child aged 15 and below receives the oral vaccine.

The Ministry of Health recently confirmed Malawi’s third wild poliovirus case—a 14-year-old child in Ndirande, the most populous township.

“It’s better for children to get vaccinated than regretting later when they get permanently paralysed. What affects the child also affects the parent,” she says.

The country triggered mass vaccination campaigns last year after detecting poliovirus in a three-year-old child in Lilongwe, the country’s first known case in three decades.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) is supporting the government implement urgent measures to stop the disease outbreak that causes death and irreversible paralysis in unvaccinated children.

Two weeks ago, Swoop Aero, with  Unicef assistance, used drones to airlift more than 8500 polio vaccine doses to hard-to-reach areas in Zomba, Mangochi and Chikwawa.

Unicef vaccine management consultant Simon Kondowe says the unmanned aerial vehicles have accelerated vaccine delivery to areas at risk of being left behind in the race to kick out polio.

Shortly after the drone landed at Magomero Health Centre, he told journalists: “Unicef is committed to ensuring the immunisation process is up to speed and up to standard.

“We have adopted innovative technologies, including drones, to successfully deliver this polio vaccine to hard-to-reach areas so that every child is safe regardless of geography.”

Unicef has procured and distributed 10.2 million vaccine doses to 865 health facilities in all 28 districts for the special nationwide polio campaigns. It also provided 250 new vaccine refrigerators, maintained 125 others  and distributed 16 000 vaccine carriers as well as 130 cold boxes.

Before taking to the skies, Swoop Aero conducts routine checks on the drones and consults the weather department to ensure all conditions are favourable for the cargo flight.

Since 2019, the Australian drone firm’s youthful team has flown vital medical supplies in Zomba, Nkhata Bay, Mangochi, Nsanje, Chikwawa, Machinga and Balaka.

To Swoop Aero operations manager Anne Nderitu, it is crucial to expand drone use to more rural communities where delivering life-saving supplies by costly land and water transport causes deadly delays.

“We have skilled drone operators in district hospitals who receive the drones from Expanded Programme on Immunisation coordinator. We also train health workers in target facilities to receive the cargo and fly the drone back,” she says.

The use of drone to overcome familiar barriers that cause deadly delays, including long trips on bad roads and risky boats, excites Chikuni.

Her face beamed as the drone carrying 500 polio vaccine doses touched down at Magomero just 13 minutes after leaving Matawale Hospital in Zomba City. A road trip across a hilly terrain takes more than 90 minutes.

Looking back, she says: “Due to the delays caused by the bumpy trip on a battered earth road, we were frequently haunted by stock-outs of vital supplies.

“As such, we used to spend a lot of money and time to travel from Magomero Health Centre to other facilities to get life-saving services when needed most.

Benson Matiki, a health surveillance assistant, says drones have cut long travels to Magomero Health Centre, only reached through bad roads.

Swoop Aero hub operator Bernard Ndawala, who flew the drone, says the technology is essential to speed up the fight against preventable public health emergencies such as polio, cholera, Covid-19, HIV and TB.

“It takes six hours to deliver medical supplies from Mangochi District Hospital to Makanjira by road if it’s not raining, but a drone gets there within 45 minutes,” he brags.

The drones proved vital in prepositioning polio vaccines in tricky rural settings such as Chisi Health Centre on a rocky island in Lake Chilwa.

However, other facilities are lagging behind due to lack of cooling facilities.

Nderitu states: “We’d have loved to deliver the vaccine in advance to Makhanga in Nsanje, but we have to deliver the same day since they don’t have refrigerators. This can be tricky in case of bad weather and Internet.”