Vikarabad (Telangana) [India]: In a first-of-its-kind initiative in India, Telangana is all set to launch the ‘Medicine from the Sky’ program on Saturday to deliver medicines and COVID-19 vaccines via drones. According to an official statement, ‘Medicine from the Sky’ is an initiative of the Emerging Technologies Wing of the Information Technology, Electronics and Communications Department, Government of Telangana in partnership with World Economic Forum (WEF), NITI Aayog and HealthNet Global (Apollo Hospitals). The project entails undertaking experimental Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) drone flights for the delivery of vaccines using the identified airspace of the Vikarabad district. The project has received the final regulatory nod from the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) to conduct the operations, and hence the launch event has now been planned for September 11. With the launch, several consortia would continue to further test the endurance of their drones over increasingly longer distances and heavier payloads to establish reliability.
