Director, Emergency Services, Bikur Cholim Hospital
Nowadays people travel all over the world. Yeshiva boys and
seminary girls travel to and from Israel to study. Parents
come to visit their offspring. Simchas are also common
reasons to visit. You need to worry about medical care while
traveling.
I won't travel to a place without known good medical care.
Sure, there are a lot of exotic places you could visit. The
new rage is for Israelis to do business in Angola. In my new
job, we have twice already had to extract people from this
large yet undeveloped country in Africa and fly them to South
Africa where good medical care exists. Many people now travel
to Eastern Europe to see the rich history that exists there.
Some countries have decent medical care, while some have it
only in bigger cities and some not at all.
No matter how poor the country is you need to have medical
insurance. Even if you use your credit card, nowadays you are
only covered if insurance is prearranged. If you are
pregnant, unless you buy a rider to your policy, the baby
will not be covered. If the baby is premature, be ready to
fork out $15,000 dollars. If you have any preexisting medical
conditions at all, or if you visited a doctor before you left
but did not finish up the work, you may not be covered. Tell
all you know and buy a rider, even if it is more
expensive.
Check that your insurance covers the country you are
visiting. Medicare does not cover outside the USA; neither
does OHIP in Ontario.
Medications vary in formulation so bring enough with you. Do
not travel to places with endemic diseases without getting
necessary vaccines.
A new phenomenon was mentioned in a recent New England
Medical Journal article. Often operations are much
cheaper abroad, and many people fly to India, for example, to
have operations at a fraction of the cost. Do all the
necessary research before agreeing to this.
Another more macabre phenomenon is that Israelis are
traveling to China and Bolivia where you can get an Israeli
transplant team to do transplants. These countries allow the
removal of organs from prisoners so it is a lot easier to get
transplants there.
Check local laws. The transplant team may be good, but the
hospital may be backward, and transplants need to be checked
for freedom from disease.
Traveling abroad is always chancy. Do the proper preparation
beforehand.
Another subject I recently wrote about is the care of minor
wounds. Keep wounds moist; they all heal faster. Do not pop
blisters, this will increase recovery time. Vaseline-coated
gauze is a great way to deal with wounds — avoid
regular gauze.
Write me in care of the Yated.
