Zipline Technologies, the world's only national-scale, instant drone delivery service, has announced the delivery of over one million programme vaccine doses to rural and hard-to-reach areas in Ghana.

The vaccines were delivered within Zipline's catchment areas at Omenako, Mpanya, Vobsi, and Sefwi Wiaso.

A statement issued by Mrs Naa Yawson, the General Manager of Zipline Ghana, and copied to the Ghana News Agency, said apart from its original mandate of delivering emergency medical components, it had partnered with the Expanded Programme on Immunization to deliver vaccines to hard-reach communities.

It will be the sole distributor of vaccines to a number of facilities within its operational areas, especially places having challenges with storage of essential medicines.

So far, a total of 1,174,227 vaccine doses have been delivered.

The company reports that vaccine orders increased by 32 per cent from March to April 2020 as the Covid-19 restricted movement came into effect.

It said vaccine orders continued to rise steadily from April 2020 and that by December 2020, monthly vaccine deliveries were four times higher than at the beginning of the year.

"We have positioned our services at the pleasure of our partner health facilities such that at any time there were shortages of any of the programme vaccines, we are available to supply the needed quantities in record time," the statement said.

"This is one of the ways we support in ensuring that as many children as possible are immunised in Ghana."

In 2021 Zipline Ghana expects an increase in the delivery of vaccines, emergency medical components and blood products as it currently does an average of 100 deliveries per distribution centre daily.

It will be recalled that Zipline, last year, announced the start of delivery of COVID-19 vaccines to test centers at Noguchi in Accra and the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine.

This, the company said, was still ongoing with about 3,575 deliveries as at December 2020.

Mrs Yawson said her outfit remained committed to ensuring the timely delivery of medical services to Ghanaians, especially in the hard-to-reach areas.

She said Zipline's partnerships with the Ghana Health Service and the Expanded Programme on Immunization had been impressive and the company hoped to build on its good relationship with its key stakeholders in the coming years.