The sun was barely rising on October 25 when Rose Ntoso stepped into her field in Monkra, a peninsula community in Ghana’s north-east Oti region. Morning mist still clung to the grasses when she felt the snake’s fangs pierce her leg.
Snakes kill as many as 300 people a year in Ghana. Most of them are rural workers like Ms Ntoso who spend their days working in fields which are not just distant but hard to reach by road.
The Monkra Community Health Planning and Services Compound to which she was rushed is typical of many in rural Africa. It does not hold supplies of antivenom and is many hours drive from a major hospital, but unlike others it is now connected – by air.
As soon as Ms Ntoso arrived at the clinic, health workers ordered a delivery of antivenom by drone. Roughly 30 minutes later, it was being administered by specially trained staff. “Without the drone, I would have died,” she told The Telegraph.
The young farmworker, like many others, owes her life to Zipline, a California-based drone-delivery company which the Telegraph first wrote about in 2018. It has flown antivenoms to 1,600 snakebite victims at the Monkra compound since 2022 under a wider network deal set up with the Ghanaian government.
“Zipline’s drones have successfully delivered more than 8.4 million medical products in the country from 2019 to 2025,” said Daniel Kwaku Merki, head of Zipline Ghana.
“We serve over 3,000 health facilities from hospitals to community health compounds in 162 districts across 14 regions” out of Ghana’s 16, he added. “Our drones have delivered malaria, HIV and TB treatments, family-planning products, vitamins, nutritional support and essential medicines for pregnant women”.
Tadeous Kwaku Nyoja, a senior nurse at the Monkra Community Health Planning and Services, attests to the impact. “Last year [2024] though we recorded 15 snakebite cases here, we were able to treat the affected people effectively with no fatalities”.
How it works
A central digital platform now links many of the country’s health centres directly to Zipline’s distribution network. Clinicians request blood, antivenom and essential medicines with a few taps on a phone, eliminating the need to maintain large inventories of time-sensitive supplies.
When a health facility submits a request, it feeds into Zipline’s central logistics system, and staff at the nearest of six distribution centres begin assembling the requested package immediately.
According to Mr Merki, blood, vaccines, antivenom and other medicines are barcoded and packed in temperature-controlled boxes to maintain cold chain integrity. Each parcel is dropped by drone and includes a small paper parachute for safe delivery.
Engineers load packages into drone noses after pre-flight checks that include GPS calibration, battery verification, system diagnostics and assessment of local weather conditions. Only after all systems pass inspection does the aircraft receive clearance for launch.
The Gharnaian government pays fixed subscription fee covering all drone flights, which allows health facilities to request deliveries at any time without incurring additional charges. Drones operate continuously, day and night, dispatching thousands of parcels weekly, across 165 districts.