Your health is priceless

Navigating a seemingly impossible emergency medical evacuation with our Unisure International Emergency and Medical Assistance Team

Our Unisure International Emergency and Medical Assistance Team conducts an average of 300 emergency evacuations a year. No two evacuations are the same. These cases require our team’s complete focus and 24/7/365 care.  Certain cases present very challenging obstacles that we’ll never forget.

One such recent case tested our teams’ operational expertise to the extreme and involved mobilising an air ambulance evacuation for a critically ill patient from a high-security military zone in Mozambique.

When Unisure Assist Operations Director, Cristina Meixieira​​, got the call to evacuate Patient Y*, there were many challenges to overcome:

After two days of constant phone calls and follow-ups on the case, our team at last secured a medical report from the military base clinic. A local air ambulance company committed to flying the patient to South Africa, at great expense. Cristina and her team then mobilised all necessary resources in order to safely transfer the patient safely via air ambulance.

Concurrently, they were also hard at work to secure a specialised South African medical team to accept our patient and oversee his needed care upon his arrival. This is no simple task, as the receiving medical team has very little information available and often does not want to accept patients into their care under such uncertain circumstances. Cristina and her team’s expertise and personal relationships with the medical professionals in our Unisure network serve us well and speak to our highly regarded reputation and professionalism.

“One of the biggest values and advantages of having a Unisure International Private Medical Insurance Plan is the immediate access it gives you to our in-house International Emergency and Medical Assistance team,” Cristina explains. “We have decades of experience, with an incredibly strong and trusted medical service provider network, which is invaluable.”

“From the moment we got the call to evacuate our patient, until the moment he landed in Johannesburg, South Africa, we were on call 24/7 for two solid days. We worked tirelessly to get him safely to the nearest point of medical excellence. Only when he landed safely were we finally able to take a first deep breath of relief, but we knew that our patient’s journey was only just beginning. Now began the arduous task of diagnosing and treating our patient…”

After three days of extensive tests, all of which our team navigated personally, Unisure flew his wife to South Africa from Tanzania to be with her husband. More anxious days followed, finally revealing the devastating news that our patient was suffering from bowel cancer, with multiple tumours in his colon and numerous metastatic deposits in his liver. The tumorous obstructions and pain necessitated our patient to undergo an emergency Laparotomy. During the surgery, our patient required a total colectomy to resect his entire colon.

The employer selected a basic level of health insurance cover, despite their employees being located on a remote site in a military zone. The patient’s cancer diagnosis was outside of the scope of his insurance medical benefits.

Five days after landing in Johannesburg, his medical bills were already in excess of $50 000. An intra-abdominal sepsis landed him back in surgery a few days later and required him to be hospitalised for more than three weeks. His critical diagnosis, and weeks of hospitalisation resulted in severe depression. Days later he was back in the theatre again because his wound became septic and needed to be drained and debrided. This resulted in another seven days in hospital, and the medical bills piling up.

Although our patient’s hospitalisation fees were covered in full as part of his Unisure health insurance plan, the sad reality is that his future remains uncertain. His inability to return to work due to his critical illness resulted in him losing his job. Without medical cover for the oncology care that he so desperately requires, his options are severely limited.

Although his oncology care would not be covered by Unisure, Unisure did not turn their back on our patient. Our team immediately set to work to assist our patient and fly him back to his home country in Spain, and contacted the National Health System there, to request assistance for his Oncology care.

This involved many days of phone calls, translations, and planning for our team who does this work with their whole heart and care deeply about our patients, never turning their backs on someone in need.

To this day our team remains in contact with the patient’s family. Our patient is currently receiving Oncology treatment in the Canary Islands, due to the benefits that his Spanish nationality affords him, and he continues to grapple with the physical and mental health issues that accompany chemotherapy and an uncertain health outcome.

This patient’s case is very significant because and highlights the importance of what could have been avoided had proper due diligence been followed.

The lessons that need to be learned from this case are many, Cristina explains, outlining a few of the major considerations:

• Preventative health checks are a necessity. This is something that every single one of us should be diligent about, whether sponsored by our employers or not. Early diagnosis significantly increases your chances of survival.
• Should you work for an employer outside of your country of residence, insist on comprehensive International Health Insurance, interrogate the level of health insurance cover your employer is offering and understand what the policy exclusions are. Without international cover, the medical bills will be crippling.
• Insist on a pre-deployment health check from your employer and let a medical professional sign off on whether or not you are fit and healthy enough to do the job, especially when you know that the medical facilities where you are working are very basic.
• Do not ignore warning signs and symptoms. If your health has deteriorated, your symptoms persist and worsen, and you suspect a misdiagnosis or something more seriously wrong with you, put pressure on your supervisors and doctors to get you the checks and health care you need.

Understanding the value and necessity of international health insurance on paper is one thing, but when you are in Cristina and her team’s shoes, for even the briefest of moments, it becomes very real. Our patients are not membership numbers to us. They are living people with families and stories and beautiful lives to live.

When you’re going to choose to put your life in the hands of an international insurer, you want to know that 24/7/365 care, support and personal investment is waiting for you on the other side.

For more information on Unisure’s International Private Medical Insurance plans and our in-house Assist medical emergency team, visit https://www.unisuregroup.com/umatter-2/.

*Name concealed to protect the identity of our patient, his family and his employer.

Source: Interview with Unisure Assist’s Operations Director, Cristina Meixieira, 10 September 2024.