IMG’s Dr. Geoff Tothill Explains The Need for Travel Medical Insurance

Why Do You Need Travel Medical Insurance?

“There’s no doubt that travelers are exposed to a whole lot of risks to their health that they would not experience at home.

They’re not necessarily related to the number of infectious diseases they could contract, or other factors intrinsic to the location that they’re going to. Often, it’s because they’re in an environment that they’re just not used to.

The classic example is of a traveler with pulmonary disease, who might go to somewhere that’s very mountainous and climb mountains, or they might go to San Francisco and simply go out for a walk and they’re challenged by climbing up hills.

And then of course, clearly, there are lots of places in the world where there is infectious disease that you wouldn’t experience at home, so travelers need to make sure they’re properly protected before they travel. If you can be vaccinated against some of these illnesses before you travel, you should make sure that you are.

These cases are all unpredictable. I mean the thing is, nobody plans to go away and get ill or get injured, so these all come out of a clear blue sky for a lot of our insureds, a lot of our members.

The sad truth is, people who travel without proper insurance, without proper cover, can suffer tremendous consequences of that. Not only might they not have access to high quality health care where they become ill, they almost certainly wouldn’t be able to afford evacuation, and ongoing care and at the end of that, repatriation.

So good insurance provides access to the best levels of care available, regionally, but also the ability for the insurer, the assistance companies, and other people, to step in and be their advocates and evacuate them from areas where they just can’t receive the right care." - IMG’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Geoff Tothill

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