Hawker Beechcraft has added MedAire’s medical safety program to its SupportPlus maintenance and parts service plan for new Hawker and Beechcraft aircraft. Owners that sign up for SupportPlus will receive an additional four years of MedLink membership, recurrent training vouchers and annual refurbishment of their aircraft first-aid kits. This augments the current MedAire membership entitlement that HBC provides to new aircraft owners.

U.S.-based Medaire (Stand 354) is also promoting its HealthMap 2012 tool here at EBACE. The map offers companies a visual representation of the medical risks present in countries all over the world, as well as providing a country-specific health risk rating.

Earlier this year Medaire introduced a new “variable risk” category, which applies to countries where the level of medical risk in the major cities is low or moderate, but in other areas is high. This level was applied to all the BRIC [Brazil, Russia, India and China] countries, plus Argentina, Azerbaijan, Chile, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Peru, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

In the BRIC countries, the level of health risk is often determined by the availability or accessibility of adequate medical care. In China, for example, pre-hospital care is an emerging concept, and transportation to a hospital may not be readily available. The concept of disease and approach to treatment can differ from Western countries, and accessing care may prove difficult because of language barriers, the lack of medical specialization and very busy medical structures. To cater for customers traveling in China International SOS recently opened a new clinic in Tianjin, its fifth in the country.