A expatriate contractor on assignment overseas in Saudi Arabia suffered a cardiac arrest at our client’s worksite. Despite receiving immediate medical treatment, the contractor sadly could not be stabilised and passed away in hospital later that day.
NES has a network of offices across the Middle East including several located in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As part of our client and contractor care, we have a local risk management team to provide immediate response in medical emergencies.
We have an established procedure that ensures we manage each stage of the process effectively with seamless and empathetic communication expressed to all parties.
The standard process to repatriate a body from Saudi Arabia in normal circumstances can take up to six weeks. To complicate matters, this event took place during the religious Islamic festival of Eid, meaning there would be additional delays on top of the existing set backs caused by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
Our Solution
Our established procedure ensures we manage each stage of the process effectively with seamless and empathetic communication expressed to all parties.
- Upon receiving an email notification from the Line Manager, our alert system automatically triggered an SMS text message to our response team, meaning that we were involved within just 30 minutes of the contractor being admitted into hospital.
The risk management team contacted our local country manager and the international medical insurance provider, to ensure that the contractor received the highest possible standard of care. - When we unfortunately received confirmation of the contractor’s death, our repatriation services provider worked in conjunction with the risk management team to start the process of transporting him home to Mexico.
We established communication to support the family with real-time updates, and also provided updates to the client.
The results of our support
Our familiarity of the local infrastructure and cross border processes meant that the repatriation process was completed in under 4 weeks and the contractor’s family were subsequently able to hold a funeral service in a reasonable amount of time.
We ensure that our contractors have comprehensive medical insurance packages and a contribution to funeral costs were paid for through this coverage. The client and family were grateful of our logistical support during this difficult time; we are glad our services could help to ease their burden and provide the on the ground support they needed.