Travel Insurance – Do I have to?

No you don’t but are you prepared for a loved one to die in squalor?

If you book through us you will know that we always recommend that you have travel insurance and this week it really hit home why you should have it.

Just before Christmas I called one of my clients to wish her a lovely cruise and a great Christmas and she was telling me she was in two minds about going away due to a family illness. Her brother in law had been on holiday In Greece when he had suffered a stroke at the age of 61. He had no travel insurance and was being cared for in a hospital in Athens where she said conditions were horrendous.

When she went over to visit him just a few weeks after he became ill he had lost almost a stone in weight and was being fed through a tube. His hands and feet were tied to the bed, for what reason I am not sure, and the only personal care he received was from volunteers who came in to clean him daily.

Distraught at the sight of this my client contacted the British Embassy whose only offer of help was an interpreter to help with the paperwork. The cost to repatriate her brother in law would run into tens of thousands and this is apparently not the responsibility of the British government.

Fortunately help came in the guise of a local Catholic charity who began organising a private plane to repatriate the gentleman in question. My clients duly went on holiday with the knowledge that their loved one would soon be home where he belonged getting the proper care he needed.

I would love to say that this has a happy ending but whilst on their cruise my clients were notified by the Catholic charity that their brother in law had passed away and was to be buried in a local cemetery  where the cost of a permanent grave is over 150000 euros. With this in mind and like many of the Greeks themselves he was placed in a rented grave where after three years he would be dug up and his remains placed in a shoebox sized container and moved to a communal ossuary. (An ossuary is a chest, box, building, well, or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains. They are frequently used where burial space is scarce.)

I am afraid it gets worse as if no one turns up to witness your remains being removed then your bones and remains are moved to a mass grave where they are dissolved with chemicals!

I am afraid at this stage of the conversation I was close to tears at the thought of someone’s loved one ending like this all for the sake of travel insurance so please, if not for yourself think of your loved ones who may have to deal with this if you don’t get your travel insurance.

Is it really worth the risk?

Get your insurance now by clicking here- don’t risk it.