Drones in Supply Chain Management

UNICEF Supply Division Guide for drones in medical supply chain: 🔗

UNICEF Supply Division Guide (Click here) 🔗

UNICEF Supply Division has been working on the integration of last mile innovations, such as drone delivery, to bridge existing infrastructural and supply chain gaps as driven by local context and need. UNICEF Supply Division provides technical expertise, country implementation support, and donor coordination and works with Regional and Country Offices and their governmental partners to scale up the use of innovative services and solutions as a part of supply chain operations.

As shown by several UNICEF projects in Malawi and Vanuatu, drone delivery offers an impactful last mile solution:

• Use of drones can lead to 65 % reduction in turnaround times of diagnostic samples (samples delivered on time, not expiring, effective diagnostics), and up to 130 % increase in diagnostic sample collection, that leads to more patients being effectively treated (in Malawi).
• Reduction of delivery time from 1-2 days to 30-60 minutes. (in Vanuatu)
• Improved compliance/adherence with immunization and treatment schedules/campaigns, introducing services that wouldn’t be available otherwise (in Vanuatu).
• Drone delivery can help minimize the vaccine (and other health commodity) stockout levels and increase general availability of health commodities at the healthfacility level. (in Vanuatu and Malawi).
• Reducing the health facility dependency on storage capacity and storage equipment (in Vanuatu).
• Other benefits observed by UNICEF partners included:
• Drone delivery bundled with other innovative interventions can offer a cost effective solution for disease (TB) control (based on WHO CEA methodologies)
• Drone delivery could decrease transport costs if the drones are used frequently enough to overcome the capital costs of installing and maintaining the system.