When life and death collide
Behind the scenes of an emergency medical evacuation we’ll never forget
Insurance may be a numbers game, but when it comes to our Unisure Assist international medical assistance team, it’s most definitely all heart.
The commitment that we make to every single one of our Umatter international private medical insurance members is unequivocal – we’ll be there for them, wherever and whenever they need us most. The kind of devotion that it takes to deliver on such a promise is nothing short of extraordinary, and it goes without saying that the life and death moments that emergency medical evacuations bring with them take a severe physical and emotional toll on everyone involved.
For our Unisure Assist Operations Director, Cristina Meixieira, and her team, the case that will forever remain in their hearts was that of a very special family in Ethiopia.
Our team initially received the call for assistance from the family’s employer when their employee’s 24-week pregnant wife was admitted to the ICU at a hospital in Addis Ababa. Her condition was unstable, and within two days of her admission, she was relying on a ventilator to breathe.
Following a series of misdiagnoses leading up to this point, aggravated by our teams waiting on delayed medical reports from her treating doctors, our Unisure Assist team made an executive decision to immediately start organising an emergency air ambulance evacuation for our patient to the nearest point of medical excellence (in Nairobi, Kenya).
After struggling with our patient’s release from the hospital, the on-the-ground assistance team boarded the air ambulance and braved a nerve-wrecking flight to Kenya, throughout which our patient’s medical stability continued to fluctuate. Against all odds, she made it through the flight and bravely continued to fight for her life.
Her Nairobi medical team diagnosed her as 28 weeks pregnant (not 24 weeks, as her Ethiopian doctors had confirmed), in a state of severe shock, with severe Pneumonia, Endocarditis, and a suspected Pulmonary Embolism. It was touch and go as they evaluated her and tried to determine whether her pregnancy should be terminated.
After three days of Cristina relying on our patient’s husband to facilitate telephonic updates with her treating doctors, she learned that the doctors were going to proceed with a C-section, both to protect the baby and to strengthen our patient’s chance of recovery.
Our patient and her precious newborn baby girl survived the surgery. The baby went straight into the neonatal ICU and was blessed to start receiving a combination of formula milk and breast milk from an amazing donor who worked as a cashier at the hospital. The donor happened to be breastfeeding her own little boy at the time, and had a surplus of milk that she knew would benefit this tiny miracle baby. To this day, Cristina says that it was thanks to this wonderful woman’s breastmilk that the baby would go on to survive her fragile entry into this world.
Unfortunately, our brave mom’s struggles continued. Following her C-section surgery, she was back in the ICU with a severe fever and remained mechanically ventilated and sedated. She underwent Hemoperfusion for 15 hours, as well as a tracheostomy. Daily tests, medical updates, new medication regimes, and specialist examinations ensued for the next 2 weeks, with our patient remaining in a critical condition.
Tragically, late on a Friday evening, her doctors informed Cristina and her team that the husband should get to the hospital as soon as possible to say goodbye as our patient was unlikely to make it through the night. He was understandably devastated and in shock and remained on the phone with Cristina all the way to the hospital and throughout his emotional goodbyes. The only consolation was the fact that he was able to be by his beloved wife’s side when she passed away.
For this heartbroken husband, as well as for Cristina and her assistance team, this was a devastating blow and a huge emotional trauma, but our team knew that their work for this family was far from complete.
Few people understand the lengths that our assistance teams go to for our members, from organising taxis, meals and accommodation to providing 24/7 updates, ensuring that counselling is provided, and, in this case, starting the rushed, admin-intensive proceedings that repatriating our patient’s body back to Ethiopia for her burial within 24 hours (as per the family’s customs) would entail.
After her timely burial, the husband needed to wait a few weeks before his baby girl reached a weight of 2 kg and was ready to be released from the hospital in Kenya. She would be returning home to Ethiopia with her father to meet her older brother and sister, both of whom had endured the ordeal of being far away from their mother while she was in Kenya and the shock of seeing her body come home in a coffin for the burial.
The moment that the whole family was finally reunited at home, so that they could begin to process what had happened and come to terms with both the loss of their wife and mother, combined with the joy of having a new baby daughter and sister in the family, is a moment of relief that Cristina will never forget.
“I’ve been doing this for 25 years; assistance is my absolute passion and life’s work,” Cristina explains, “but I’ve never experienced anything like this case. Fighting for a mother, a baby, a husband, and a brother and a sister; it was a whole family that we evacuated out of Ethiopia. I cannot even begin to explain the emotions that we went through with this very special family over those 3 months, and that we are still going through together today in our regular chats.”
“I know that I’m a better assistance worker for it, but I will be marked by this case forever. We helped a family and the work we did paves the way for this precious family’s future. Nothing can change the fact that our patient very sadly did not make it, however, and she will be mourned by Unisure and her family always.”
The grieving husband will be forever grateful for the support that his company showed him, first through his enrolment in an international private medical insurance plan like Umatter, which enabled him and his family to seek the expert international care that they so desperately needed, and secondly through their unwavering emotional, financial and even physical support, to the point of many of his team members being at the airport to greet him and support him on the emotional journey home for his wife’s burial.
It is cases like these that remind us that company-sponsored health insurance isn’t a ‘nice to have’, but a must-have. And it is thanks to good employers and dedicated staff like Cristina and her team, that our little baby and her family have a beautiful future ahead of them.
Source: Interview with Unisure Assist’s Operations Director, Cristina Meixieira, 27 June 2023