HealthMap 2014 Helps Travelers Understand Medical Risks Worldwide

MedAire, an International SOS company, has published HealthMap 2014, a tool to help organizations understand the medical risks in the markets where they operate and to plan support for the health of their executives, passengers and crew.

The HealthMap is now in its fifth year of publication.

The HealthMap 2014 indicates risk and the level of medical assistance often implemented for five categories. ‘Low’, ‘Medium’, ‘Medium & High’, ‘High’ and ‘Extreme’ Medical risk ratings are assigned to countries after assessment of a range of factors including the standard of local medical and dental care available, access to prescription drugs, the presence of serious infectious diseases and cultural, language or administrative barriers.

The HealthMap is a resource for flight departments and executives to understand the level of preparation needed by travelers prior to departure and the degree of medical support they may need once at their destination.

“Over the past three years, 61% of the inflight medical cases we received from general aviation clients were on flights traveling internationally,” said Dr. Paulo Alves, MedAire’s Global Medical Director of Aviation. “This is an important statistic when reviewing the HealthMap, especially should a decision be made to divert the flight to the nearest adequate medical facility.”

“The HealthMap is also a helpful resource for domestic flights,” Alves added. “The medical risk within a country can vary widely. In fact, even major cities may have contrasting levels of care, with high-quality medical centers not too far from poorly resourced facilities. There are also still potential obstacles when traveling to countries with a low medical risk, as travelers may need assistance with language and cultural differences as well as payment facilitation.”

MedAire provides business and general aviation clients with medical, travel and safety services inflight and at destination. The travel safety solution includes access to aviation travel security briefs, information and advice to mitigate risks at destination and access to the MedAire global network of medical resources, security experts, local providers and logistics personnel.

The HealthMap content is also available in the MedAire Trip Ready app for iPad. Pilots and flight departments can see at a glance the medical and travel risk ratings, local time, current weather, and NOTAMS for each destination on their itinerary.

“We refer to the MedAire Trip Ready app and the analysis it provides when deciding whether to accept a flight and making our go/no go decisions,” said Nick van der Meer, Accountable Manager of VistaJet, a global business aviation company that arranges flights to over 182 countries. “For high and extreme risk areas, we add a call to the MedAire experts to get a trip-specific briefing. Understanding medical risks at requested destinations allows us to provide our crew and passengers with an enhanced level of service and support.”