12th January, 2012
Nairobi, Kenya – January 12, 2012 – AMREF Flying Doctors, the leading air ambulance service provider in East Africa and Chartis Insurance Company Limited a global leader in property-casualty and general insurance, have signed an Underwriting Agreement that will provide comprehensive coverage to subscribers of the AMREF Flying Doctors Air Ambulance Service.
Under the terms of the agreement, Chartis Insurance Company Limited will underwrite the Air Ambulance services provided by AMREF Flying Doctors to in-bound tourists, individual and corporate annual subscribers from the point of an incident from anywhere within the East Africa region, including: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Zanzibar Ethiopia and Southern Sudan.
At a media briefing in Nairobi today, Dr Bettina Vadera, Chief Executive Officer and Medical Director of AMREF Flying Doctors, said “We are very happy to be working with Chartis Insurance on this exciting new project and look forward to drawing from their in-depth understanding and expertise in the medical insurance field. This agreement underlines AMREF Flying Doctors commitment to provide quality and affordable air evacuation services throughout the Eastern Africa region”
The AMREF Flying Doctors Team and fleet
The signing of the new underwriting agreement is part of an on-going programme by AMREF Flying Doctors to expand and streamline its 55-year-old air ambulance service and is aimed at reaching more individuals and groups with affordable and high quality services.
Japh Olende, the Chartis Kenya Managing Director, expressed his confidence that the collaboration would enable more people in the region to access affordable travel insurance. At 2.1 per cent, insurance penetration was quite low in Kenya, he said, adding that only innovative and integrated approaches would help in ensuring more people take out insurance.
“This partnership opens a new channel of insurance distribution that has never been explored before in Kenya. Industry players should abandon the old ways of marketing and distributing their products and explore ways of reaching more clients,” he said.
Over the last five years, the demand for air evacuations in the region has been on a steady rise. In 2011, AMREF Flying Doctors flew almost 1,000,000 Miles (1.6 Million Kilometres) on evacuation missions – this being nearly twice the mileage recorded in 2006. During the same year, patient evacuations increased to 1,254 – up from the previous record of 782 patients in 2010.
