Mahama Ayariga, the Majority Leader in parliament, has boldly declared that the former government’s contract with Zipline for the drone delivery of essential medicines was a total waste of money.
According to Mahama Ayariga, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has the capacity to procure its own drones to deliver critical drugs to communities.
Speaking on the floor of Parliament, Mahama Ayariga stated, “It’s a total waste of money. The most expensive drones don’t even go beyond twenty thousand dollars. By now, we would have had drones for every district in this country managed by the Ghana Health Service. Let’s do a total calculation on how much money we have wasted on this Zipline contract.”
“I call for a cancellation of the contract. The contract should be cancelled. The Ghana Health Service should develop its own in-house capacity to deliver the blood through its own drones,” he added.
His remarks come on the back of Alexander Afenyo-Markin, the minority leader, calling on the Leader of Government Business to summon the Health Minister to parliament to update the house on Zipline operations following three centres being shut down due to the government’s GH₵175 million unpaid debt.
It will be recalled, the former Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, on Wednesday, April 24, 2019, launched the drones-for-medical-supplies initiative at Zipline’s first distribution centre at Omenako in the Eastern Region.
The $12.5 million contract was to enable the Ghana Health Service to fly blood and other essential medical supplies to deprived and hard-to-reach areas.
Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, last year 2024, shared the reasons why he initiated the establishment of ZIPLINE Drone operations in Ghana.
Speaking at a Youth Connect event as part of his campaign leading to the 2024 elections, Dr Bawumia explained, “Today, we have brought drones into Ghana to deliver medicines, vaccines, and blood. Many people were dying needlessly because they could not get medicine on time. A snake can bite you on the farm, and you need medicine—anti-ssnake serum immediately. A mother can be giving birth in a village and needs blood immediately. In 2002, my father had an operation in Tamale and he was losing blood. We were looking for blood; the blood bank was locked. We tried to find the operator, but we couldn’t find him. By the morning, my father had passed away,” Bawumia narrated.
He added, “So when I heard about drones and ZIPLINE and what they could do in delivering blood, I took my team and went to San Francisco. We met the ZIPLINE company, and we convinced them to come to Ghana and set up six drone centres in Ghana. We have six drone centres which are delivering medicines, blood, and vaccines to 2700 hospitals and health centres in Ghana.
Every day, we are saving lives. So far, the drones have flown 540,000 flights, and what is interesting is that all six drone centres are managed by Ghanaians; no foreigners are managing the drone centres. Hundred per cent being manned by Ghanaians”.
“It is very important that recently the US Vice President, Kamala Harris, made a statement congratulating Ghana for taking the lead and the leadership role in medical drone delivery. Why did she say so? Because your own Ghana, our own Ghana, is the whole world’s largest medical drone delivery service, the whole world.
We are leading the whole world. A few months ago, ZIPLINE came and took somebody from Ghana to go and train drone flying operators in San Francisco. And so we are taking the lead,” Bawumia added.