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There’s a better than 90% chance that I’ll leave for a warm and dusty place in a couple of weeks to do information management for a UN agency. Unfortunately, I find it incredibly difficult to find an insurance that will cover me while on mission. Any leads would be extremely welcome!

Until now I always went to the field as an employee, not as a consultant, and so I never had to worry about how I was insured. Now it has suddenly become a pressing issue. The problem is that I’m supposed to spend three months in one of the few distinguished countries where an official travel warning is in place, advising against all travel – not just “all essential traffic“.  Delightful.

• I have found an insurance that would cover health costs in country, but which doesn’t  cover medical evacuations from countries for which a travel warning exists. This would mean that if I’m in a traffic accident and break my leg badly, I would have to pay for the evacuation myself. Not a good idea.
• Another insurance would cover me, but would exclude any medical emergencies that are the result of the conditions that caused the travel warning. That means, that if I walk too close to a protest march and someone hits me with a stone, I am not covered. That doesn’t sound too good, either.
• The third option I found was an insurance that would do medevacs but would not cover any health costs prior to the evacuation or after. Again, far from ideal because that would mean that I’d have to all pay in-country costs myself and life-saving surgery can be expensive.

Obviously, I could combine multiple policies but considering that these are far from cheap, I would very quickly pay so much money for the insurances that I might just as well stay home. I also found it slightly scary that some of the insurances that friends have recommended and with whom they had travelled to far more dangerous places, actually did not award them the level of coverage they thought they had!

I have already checked SOS International (no in-country coverage) and ihi Bupa (no medevac), but would be very happy if anyone can recommend any other insurance companies. My insurance broker has unfortunately already given up .

Update 30.11.2012: ihi Bupa clarified that they would offer medevac even if I am in a country where a travel warning was already in place when I entered. They just don’t do evacuations or cover the costs of flights that were necessary because of a deteriorating security situation, which is fair enough. So I decided to go with ihi Bupa in the end.