Serious As A Heart Attack In Namibia!

What’s In Your Wallet?

The Financial Side Of Our Recent International Medical Emergency

Serious As A Heart Attack In Namibia!

Introduction (if you want to get to the important stuff, skip ahead as our detailed information begins below with “serious as a heart attack“

We’ve researched travel insurance, spoken with people who had emergencies on the road, and read numerous advice articles and thought we had the subject covered. At this point I will quote my two favorite pieces of wisdom:

“If you’re looking for a guarantee in life go buy a toaster” Clint Eastwood

“No battle plan, no matter how good, survives first contact with the enemy” George Patton

As travel years go 2026 got off to a good start with our Chile adventure seeing the country top to bottom, but things seemed to have gone down hill from there. The next trip was to be Dubai and a grand tour around Egypt. Things were looking good until a week before the trip when war broke out. Flights started getting quickly canceled. In only 2 days all flights were gone.

Red and white striped lighthouse on a sandy beach near a harbor with ships and numerous seals on the shore. — The lighthouse stands tall by the shore, surrounded by seals with ships docked in the harbor beyond.

The next trip was for 30 days starting in London. It included a few days in Cape Town and picking up a cruise visiting ports in western Africa. Those ports included two in Namibia (*more about Namibia below), Saint Helena Island, a Cape Verde Island, a port in the Canaries with a flight back to London. The first hit was just two weeks before departure and our flight from the U.S. to London’s Gatwick simply got cancelled (no explanation, no offer of a rebooking, nothing and replacement reservations would cost significantly more).

Fortunately travel insurance (a one year policy with Allianz) stepped in and replaced the cancelled flight (that covered expense more than exceeded the total plan premium). Actually the trip started out well but after a few days in Cape Town the weather turned really bad. Heavy rains and high winds (weather happens so what are you going to do?) and the ship waited an extra day to set sail because of high seas. We skipped the first port in Namibia and on day two put in at Walvis Bay, Namibia. We spent the day seeing the town and hiked out looking for the flamingo lagoon. The next day we had booked a full day trip up the coast and out on the dunes to start at 9 am.

Serious As A Heart Attack

The first night in port in Namibia the better half of The Intentional Travelers woke up at 3 am with mild chest pain. She went back to sleep and at 7 am the nagging pain was back. At breakfast it got worse and about 7:50 AM we headed off to see the ship’s doctor. By the time we reached the clinic door her pain was unbearable. She’s screaming, everybody in the clinic is rushing to her and I’m literally scared out of my mind.

After some blood thinners(?) and an EKG the doctor and nurse call for an ambulance from Walvis Bay. It’s now 8:40 and the ship got rid of us so fast that they had our suitcases packed (more like crammed full), and on the pier waiting for the ambulance before 9 am. 20 minutes later she’s admitted to Welwitschia Hospital in Walvis Bay Namibia. We’ve now discovered that Azamara (the cruise ship line) has charged our credit card for $1,600. That represents 50 minutes of clinic time, a handful of medication and an EKG! While we are very glad they were there in this emergency we’re also glad that they are not our regular health care provider.

At the hospital there’s a rush for information as the admit her. While my wife is a hyper organized person and in her back pack is a folder containing, among other things, insurance cards, policy information, and contacts, it still requires someone who understands what they’re looking for and it seems I’m not that guy. She’s still focused on her pain and what’s happening and in no condition to flip through files or contribute to the process unfolding around her.

Lesson Number One • Carry Well-Organized And Detailed Medical Information

We’ve now learned that having international insurance and carrying ID cards is not good enough for traveling internationally, especially if you’re visiting lots of different places. For a major medical emergency we now recommend that you carry a single document (several pages if necessary and each person has there own copy and understands its organization). Doing this will save a lot of very important time and be more accurate than your thinking is in the midst of a medical crisis where doctors and hospital staff are asking a lot of health history and coverage questions.

The paper should include listings for each insurance policy by name, coverage, contact information with phone numbers. Your home doctor information, your date of birth, and clear information about your home address, home and cell phone numbers, emergency contact information with phone numbers. Also lists of current medications, current and previous medical conditions and any surgeries you’ve had. I don’t care what hospital it is and in what country, doctors will insist on as much medical history as you can provide and hospitals will really want to know who’s paying and how to contact them.

An Emergency ID Card

You’ll find elsewhere on our website a downloadable and printable Emergency ID Card that would be, at the very least, a good starting point for EMTs, doctors and hospitals. (CLICK HERE) it’s free.

Back To Our Emergency Story

Namibia is a poor country and it has a very small population and, probably for very good reasons, they do not trust insurance companies. They informed us that we would have to pay for the hospital, every service as it was rendered and doctor fees because they will not accept a guarantee from and will bill your insurance providers. It seems that everyone we met in Namibia carries around a portable credit card transaction device and for two days and a half I was paying for hospital rooms, x-rays, blood tests and lord knows what else.

We are now in contact with two of our insurance providers and an agent for the cruise line. While the insurance providers will reimburse us, for the time being we will have to make the payments. Our only real option at the time is to use credit cards. We have a number of credit cards, but thinking that we are protecting ourselves we leave many of them home when we travel. We are now getting in touch with the carried credit card banks notifying them that this rush of charges are legit and there may be a need to extend our credit lines.

Lesson Number Two • Carry All Your Credit Cards When Traveling Internationally

In an international medical emergency you may need to temporarily have access to a substantial amount of money. So when you travel internationally do not leave any credit or debit cards at home. By all means keep them as secure as you can but having them with you could become critically important. It also may be a good idea to arrange to have a financial backstop back home. Someone with access to a bank account that could arrange wiring money etcetera.

Back To My Wife’s Medical Emergency

With the pain meds working and the blood thinners improving her vitals, the hospital starts conducting more tests and imaging confirms she has had a heart attack. The hospital staff could not be more professional, helpful and pleasant and there’s a steady stream of medical people in and out of her ICU room. By early evening she is looking better and says she’s feeling much better too. A few hours later a doctor comes in to say they’re seriously concerned. They’ve been conducting continuous blood work and there’s a cardiac enzyme or protein that indicates how seriously the heart muscle is stressed or damaged by a heart attack and as her vitals improved that indicator should have been going down as well. The concern is that it’s actually going up and at an alarming rate. That indicates a continuing and serious medical emergency involving her heart and they are not equipped to provide the anticipated level of care or treatment she needs!?

We now have to jump into figuring out how to get her moved and to where. The ICU doctor says the nearest properly equipped hospital is in Namibia’s Capital of Windhoe a four plus hour drive away. The good news is we have medical evacuation insurance. Our’s is from EA+*1 and we contact them. In almost no time they are in contact with the ICU doctor and he is providing them with lab work. Soon they contact me to say they are researching the right hospitals and it seems to be one of three choices in Johannesburg, South Africa. While they contact the various hospitals and doctors they are also getting ready to dispatch an air ambulance to us in Walvis Bay, Namibia with a medical team onboard. Unfortunately the local airport has closed for the day.

The next morning we’re told that the jet and medical team will be on the ground in Walvis Bay soon and that they have selected a cardiologist at Morningside MediClinic in Johannesburg to receive her.

Lesson Number Three • Make Sure You Have Medical Evacuation Coverage

About six years ago we had neighbors who suffered a serious medical emergency in Europe. Without proper medical insurance nor medical evacuation coverage, the costs to them were catastrophic. After learning that we subscribed to EA+ Emergency Evacuation Insurance. Some travel insurance may include it but be careful, many do not. Be particularly careful of policies that are offered with cruises or organized land tours and double check that it includes that coverage. In our case EA+ quickly dispatched an evacuation jet to Namibia with a doctor, a paramedic and a technician. They arranged ambulances to the airport in Walvis Bay and to the medical center in Johannesburg, South Africa.

At the hospital the doctor preformed a coronary angiogram, cleared one blockage with a balloon peripheral angioplasty and put in a stent for the other major blockage. Our regular travel insurance (Allianz) will pay those medical bills (up to $50,000) and will also reimburse us for the costs in Namibia.

EA+ has also paid for ambulances to our flights, our hotel bills, all airfare and is now dispatching a nurse from Canada to manage my wife’s care as they make travel arrangements to get us all home.

The truth is, I have no idea what the cost of a private jet with a doctor and paramedic is or the costs of dispatching a nurse 9,000 miles to reach us along with 9,000 miles of flights to get us all home and I may never know. One thing I am sure of is I’m very thankful that it’s not us paying those bills.

Lesson Number Four (Actually It’s More of a Question) • How Do You Get Your Suitcases Home?

This is something that falls under the category of reading your policies coverage and keeping track of contact information in your travel folder.

During the emergency medical evacuation from the Namibian hospital we were told at the last minute that they could not take our luggage onto the evacuation jet – there just isn’t enough room and there was also weight limitation on our two backpacks (strict policy). With less than a half hour till departure we had to shift around our travel content between suitcases and backpacks and find someone who would take charge of our suitcases. In our case the hospital administrator had become our close friend and she agreed to hold our suitcases in her office until we could work something out. After we had departed we learned that our Allianz insurance had coverage for transporting suitcases home in a medical emergency. What a relief, checking into services available online I was quoted US$750 to transport our two carry-on suitcases home (based on weight and size).

Again check your policy details for this eventuality. In our insurance policy we found that Allianz Travel Insurance “provides dedicated Concierge and 24/7 Assistance services to help recover or reunite you with your suitcases if you are incapacitated by a medical emergency. This includes coordinating baggage return, tracking lost items, and arranging emergency travel.”

In Conclusion

Maybe you’ve been traveling without giving much thought to travel insurance? Perhaps you bought travel coverage but haven’t read your policies coverage? Maybe you just don’t think something like this will happen to you, after all, what are the chances? After reading about our medical emergency and what could have happened and just how lucky we were to have that insurance, we hope you will take a look at what coverage you have verses what you may someday need.

A Brief Introduction To Namibia

Namibia is a vast, sparsely populated Southern African nation spanning almost 317,875 square miles (roughly the size of Texas and Louisiana combined). It is mostly desert having the worlds tallest known sand dune, Dune 7, located in the Namib Desert near Walvis Bay. It rises approximately 1,256 feet above sea level. Its Atlantic coast is famously known as the “skeleton coast of the Atlantic” for all the ships that have wrecked during storms on its shores.

Namibia’s history spans from ancient indigenous roots to a long, brutal struggle with German colonization and South African apartheid, culminating in a hard-won independence on March 21, 1990. Today, it is recognized as a peaceful and stable democratic republic.

The country supports a young, population of only 2.1 million people based on the most recent census count centered mostly in Windhoek, the capital, Walvis Bay, its major seaport and several smaller coastal towns. Additional populations of original indigenous groups remain difficult to count accurately.

Historically rooted in its colonial past with a long, brutal struggle through German colonization and South African apartheid, that culminated in a hard-won independence on March 21, 1990. Today, it is recognized as a peaceful and stable democratic republic. It’s economy is centered on its seaport, a growing tourist industry with an average per capita income for the population residing in the cities of about US$4,000 to US$4,700.