Nearly all of us travel on a regular basis. Be it for work
or pleasure, Malaysians are a well-travelled lot. Compared to Americans for
example, where only about 10 per cent of the population possess a passport,
Malaysians generally travel far and wide.
But do we travel smart?
Of late, newspapers carried stories of Malaysians admitted
to hospitals abroad. These were not people who lived or worked abroad, but
regular tourists from Malaysia.
Take the story of the Mara employee who suffered a stroke
upon landing at Heathrow. Or the Universiti Utara Malaysia student whose
appendix ruptured while attending a forum in Seoul, South Koera. These are the
more recent stories.
In the last four years alone, there have been countless
others — the businessman who stepped off the plane and went into cardiac
arrest, the student who had just arrived in the United Kingdom and had to be
sent home for depression and anxiety and the tourist who had an aneurysm while
vacationing in the Gold Coast.
As more and more Malaysians take to the skies, the
statistics of Malaysians hospitalised abroad will increase. Sometimes,
Malaysian travellers take things for granted.
Healthcare, which for a while was the battleground between
United States Barack Obama’s White House and the Republican Congress, is one
area where Malaysians rarely fret over.
In Malaysia, foreigners pay RM2 to get treated at government
hospitals.
In the US where
healthcare is big business, I had had the dubious pleasure of forking out
US$245 (RM983) for a container of medicine that was prescribed to me by my
embassy doctor. I remember the pitying looks of the pharmacist as he tried to
help me save my dollars. Did I have any kind of insurance, he asked. Did I
enter into any co-pay arrangement with any of the health providers?
Then came the sympathy part. The pharmacist wanted to give
me a generic medication so that I would not have to pay more. That would have
been ideal, but there was no generic alternative for the medication that I
needed.
So I can well empathise with Malaysian tourists who fall
sick and then find out the cost of the treatment is higher than their airfare
home.
There was that
incident at Heathrow in 2014 when a Malaysian collapsed while in the
immigration queue and she spent the next month in intensive care.
In addition to the
hospital bill, her family had to pay for accommodation in London, an extra
person to care for her in the hospital, and the cost of the accompanying
medical personnel on board when she could finally return home. The bill? A
whopping RM1.2 million.
However, we need not
be gamblers in this game of risk. Every time we buy a flight ticket, there is
an option to purchase insurance. Most of us ignore that part because let’s face
it — what are the chances of getting sick while on holiday? Amazingly high, it
seems.
The stress of organising a holiday, coupled with being in an
enclosed plane for hours and the recycled germs of the people on that same
plane put travellers at a higher risk of falling ill than people who do not
travel.
A Tilburg University study in 2007 termed this as “leisure
sickness” and found that even normally healthy people increase exponentially
their risk of becoming ill during their leisure time.
It makes sense,
therefore, that for those who are about to travel, they need to protect
themselves not only against the possibility of falling ill, but also to ensure
financial recourse in the event that the unexpected happens.
First, identify what kind of risks you might face. Even a
seemingly healthy person can fall ill during their travels, much less a person
who already has a medical condition or will be travelling to somewhere
“exotic”.
The more exotic the
place, the higher the risk because your body may not be able to adjust
accordingly.
Our immune system may not be immune to certain bacteria in
the drinking water of a foreign country, for example. Or the heat may be too
much for us to take. Or our body may not be able to warm itself quickly enough
in ice-cold temperatures.
Second, identify what coverage you need. There are those
among us who happily take out a “travel insurance” when they get on a flight.
Read the fine print. The coverage may only extend to lost luggage (not even
delayed luggage), cancelled flights or lost credit cards. It may not cover
illnesses during the journey.
Third, confirm what coverage you already have. Some life
insurance plans include up to a month of travel, but most only provide coverage
in Malaysia. There may then be a need to take additional protection.
Whatever a person’s lifestyle, there is always that added
risk when travelling. Malaysia’s embassies can only do so much to assist the
ailing traveller. In the end, it is the high cost of treatments and surgeries
that will be the crippling factor.
It is good that many Malaysians travel to even the remotest
of places. Now, that we have started exploring, it is time for us to also
travel smart. Dr Shazelina Zainul Abidin is a foreign service officer and a
research fellow of the University of Sheffield. She writes about diplomacy and
world affairs.
Get your protection now! Golden Sunshine
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