INDIA – Flipkart, an Indian e-commerce company, has announced partnering with Telangana government under the medicines from the sky project to pilot delivery of medical supplies and vaccines using drones.
The medicines from the sky project which was conceived by the World Economic Forum and Healthnet Global outlines the requirements for drone delivery. Telangana government has adopted this framework to implement drones for last mile delivery and will integrate them into the state’s healthcare supply chain.
Flipkart will utilize learnings from its tech-enabled supply chain to deploy drones for a six-day pilot project which will primarily deliver COVID vaccines safely.
A combination of technologies, including geo mapping, will be integrated in the project to eventually conduct Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) deliveries in remote areas of the state where the road infrastructure is not conducive for fast delivery of medical supplies.
During the announcement, Rajneesh Kumar, Senior Vice-President and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at Flipkart, said the COVID-19 crisis has pushed the envelope in the rapid development of scalable and robust technologies for the safety and wellbeing of the masses.
According to state health agency, Telangana state yesterday recorded 1,707 new COVID infections and 16 fatalities. This numbers pushes the cumulative deaths to 3,456 and 600,318. The number of active cases in Telangana, as on Friday evening, stood at 22,759 with the state recording a recovery rate of 95.63%.
After facing months of pandemic’s second wave devastation, health experts are hinting at total waning of cases in Telangana by June end as the state continues to pioneer the use of technology to improve the lives of citizens.
Not so long ago, the government of Telangana announced that it will provide children orphaned during the pandemic with mobile phones fitted with all emergency contacts.
“When provided with these mobile phones, the orphaned children can find help in just a click and contact any of the officers whose numbers are saved in the phone. We have counselled the children on whom to contact when,” said T Akkeshwar Rao, the district welfare officer (DWO) of Hyderabad, Telangana.
Rao informed that at least 10 children were rendered orphaned in the Hyderabad district alone as their parents succumbed to Covid-19. As many as 75 children lost their parents due to other reasons during the pandemic.
The looming threat of the third wave in India has made it necessary that precautions be taken and preparations made.
