What happens if you are sick on a cruise?

I had an interesting conversation with the nurse who administered my Remicade the other day. I guess she had previously worked for a US air ambulance service. If you are on a cruise ship and you are sick and need emergency services the ship essentially drops you off at the next port of call. Say you are cruising around the Caribbean you could be dropped off on the next island, in whatever country it is such as Haiti, for treatment and the boat essentially leaves you there to receive care, and also leaves you to figure out how the heck to get home on your own. You could find yourself in some 3rd world nation with crappy medical care, and limited English skills. I guess as part of the air ambulance service she would fly in with some other medical people, pick up the US citizen and fly him/her back to the US for healthcare. She said she'd been to all sorts of countries and seen pretty much everything in regard to quality of medical care offered in other countries where people were unexpectedly dropped off on. I can only imagine what that air ambulance service costs...

Certainly something to consider when booking that next cruise. Maybe pack your emergency flareup kit just in case uc decides to ruin your vacation.

Huh - I never would have thought about this. I was considering a cruse this year at some point. I always assumed the cruse Doctor and Nurse would treat/deal with the issues - but then again that probably stems from watching to many episodes of The Love Boat when I was younger.

You must be able to buy airlift emergency insurance as parts of your package or something perhaps. Would be a worthwhile investment just in case...

But also same for airplane, they make emergency landing, had that happen with family member who had heart attack....

You can purchase travel health insurance, probably from the cruise/travel company.

I just got back from a long van trip to Canada and a week before I left a friend asked if I had thought about buying a policy because she had been on a cruise and a guy messed up his ankle badly while off the ship and was treated by (Canadian) hospital. He had no travel policy, was on Medicare policy that does not cover non-US (some do).

My one month policy cost $58 online and covered everything including pre-existing conditions and airflights. Some policies (US based) don't cover pre-existing because they don't want expensive heart attack people. My spouses Medicare policy does cover out of country.

Foreign nationals that come to the US on vacay/business also buy health policies which amazingly I saw for sale in the Canada grocery store! A pre-paid card thingy.

We sometimes handle cruise death certificates at work. Interesting when one passes in International waters.