Commencing positive and committed steps towards improving seafarer wellbeing on board, the Shipowners’ Club has created its own “Medical Enhancement Scheme for Seafarers” (Medisea).
According to the Club, it recently undertook a review of its seafarer illness claims. The associated statistics raised concerns regarding the overall standard of seafarers’ physical and mental wellbeing, as the Club believes that this is vital to having a safe and happy environment on board.
When analysing the data, it became apparent that many of the illnesses recorded were of a type that could have been detected and investigated had an enhanced pre-employment medical examination (ePEME) been carried out.
Whilst an ePEME would not prevent all illness claims, there would have been a very good possibility that the frequency of such occurrences on board could have been significantly reduced
Since its inception in Feb 2019, the Medisea programme is currently available for Filipino and Indonesian seafarers and will soon be expanded further to include Indian and Malaysian seafarers. The long-term plan is to gradually extend this scheme to seafarers of all nationalities serving on board entered vessels.
The scheme begins with an enhanced pre-employment medical examination followed by provision of seafarer health and wellbeing benefits delivered by the Club and its partners.
To ensure operators are not exposed to higher operating and insurance costs, Medisea will be available at no additional cost to the existing statutory medicals. The Medisea medicals will be valid for 24 months and can be undertaken concurrently with the statutory MLC Medicals.
In order to ensure the Club and operators can be assured of consistency with the scheme, careful auditing by a well experienced and trained medical practitioner has been conducted, providing the Club with a list of accredited medical clinics in relevant locations.
"The clinics will further be subject to rigorous annual audits. Only the clinics on the Club’s List of Accredited Clinics should be used as part Medisea", the Shipowners’ Club explained.
Source: Safety4sea
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