Seafarers’ recovery above all!
In the many medical repatriation and recovery cases it has handled so far, AIM experienced cases where seafarers are utterly helpless in their recovery effort without outside help. This help ought to be provided by close family members but due to the circumstances of seafarers, most of the time they are alone in seeking medical treatment or rehabilitation. AIM has been tested in many ways and countless times provided extra service and effort to the crew resulting in their recovery or acceptance of condition. While it may be said that such extra service or effort comes with the job, for AIM, the motivation that seafarers handled by it must achieve recovery if not case-free, drives it to walk an extra-mile.
In one case for example, the seafarer received instructions from a doctor that his wound in the back must be constantly cleaned and changed dressing while at home. Since the seafarer was transiently boarding in AIM’s Guest House in between his medical check-up schedule, AIM had to assists him because the location of the wound made it unreachable for the seafarer to do it by himself.
A similar case is in which AIM helped a nervous crew who underwent pterygium excision to put eyedrops in his eyes while waiting for his flight home the next day. Or assisting a seafarer who suffered from fracture of both feet, to get up to go to the toilet or somewhere and to go back to his bed. In going to the hospital for his regular check-up, AIM staff had to carry him from his wheelchair to the service van and to the doctor’s clinic throughout his entire rehabilitation treatment in the hospital.
Other cases include aiding a crew member to obtain medical treatment for a non work-related illness, which he was objecting to, in a modest hospital whose billings were cared of under AIM. This had to be done by AIM because aside from being skeptical about the findings of the doctors, the seafarer was harboring ill-feeling against his employers for having felt neglected and abandoned by them. This considerably calmed the crew in such a manner that after the operation, he went straight home to his family in the province.
In the many ways that AIM extended help, though trivial, petty, which comes with the job, and maybe unnecessary, AIM believes that it resulted in the recovery of the majority of its repatriated seafarers or in helping them to accept the outcome of the treatment. For AIM, this is its best accomplishment.
