Companies

Medical firm in global bid

By Karen Yip (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-11-29 10:33

BEIJING - "Business is good but it could be better," said He Jingbin.

The director of government relations (China) at International SOS, a specialized medical services provider, has sent a team comprised of Mandarin-speaking doctors and nurses to accompany Chinese workers bound for Sudan on an oil and gas exploration project on behalf of a State-owned enterprise. The medical assignment will last for a year.

As more Chinese companies venture abroad, so does the rise in demand for tailored healthcare, partly due to greater knowledge regarding duty of care, the concept that employers have legal and moral obligation to act prudently toward employees to avoid injuries.

With the majority of the Chinese ventures concentrated in energy and mineral resources - usually in remote, foreign environments - aside from the usual medical needs, specialized healthcare requirements can differ widely from repatriation during emergencies (natural disasters, civil unrests or accidents at work or outside of work) to preventive medical treatment in high-risk countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"We go wherever our clients go. Demand from corporate clients and individuals is expected to rise as the economy moves forward and the rising affluence of China and the Chinese will encourage more to travel to or from China," He said in an interview with China Daily.

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For example, in January 2009, a bus with 15 Chinese people from Shanghai was involved in a road accident while traveling in the United States. International SOS repatriated five Chinese people and six bodies to China within a week of the incident. The remaining Chinese people decided to seek medical treatment in the US.

During the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, international SOS activated its medical and logistics facilities in Beijing, Hong Kong and Singapore to assist families and victims of the disaster.

In a landmark case in September 2006, International SOS repatriated fourteen tourists from Taiwan who were injured when their tour bus overturned and plunged into a river on the way from Heilongjiang to Jilin in Northeast China.

The Taiwan people flew directly home on the first ever direct mass- chartered flight organized by International SOS, which was made possible due to an agreement between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan to allow direct air access by chartered flights for emergency medical rescues.

Banking on its specialized expertise on medical repatriation and evacuation, he foresees that such need - a new concept in China and among the Chinese but common in the West - will pick up due to self-awareness and as more insurance companies include such coverage for their policy-holders.

Special medical needs also arise from China's hosting of major events such as the Olympic Games and Shanghai Expo.

International SOS relies on its global team of 900 full-time physicians and 200 security specialists to enable its client list, which includes 66 percent of the Fortune 500 companies, to operate in any location for work or travel.