  The focus of this research is to evaluate the use of drones for the delivery
of pediatric vaccines in remote areas of low income and low and middle income
countries. Delivering vaccines in these regions is challenging because of the
inadequate road networks, and long transportation distances that make it
difficult to maintain the cold chain integrity during transportation. We
propose a mixed integer linear program to determine the location of drone hubs
to facilitate the delivery of vaccines. The model considers the operational
attributes of drones, vaccine wastage in the supply chain, cold storage and
transportation capacities. We develop a case study using data from Niger to
determine the impact of drone deliveries in improving vaccine availability in
Niger. Our numerical analysis show an 0.71 to 2.21 increase in vaccine
availability. These improvements depend on the available budget to build drone
hubs and purchase drones, and the population density in the region of study.
