Wall Street Journal Notes Global Rescue’s Work With Injured Students Abroad

The ‘Informed Patient’ column in the Wall Street Journal last week explored the subject of keeping students safe while they’re away from home for the summer, and mentions the story of a Global Rescue member who was treated for gall bladder complications while in Togo. All of the stories — including a 14-year-old girl diagnosed with encephalitis in China and a college student who was hospitalized in Chile after eating undercooked fish — spoke of narrow misses with disaster and did not shed a positive light on the summer programs that sent the students abroad. This is the second warning from the mass media in about a month’s time about the holes in many programs’ coverage and disaster plans for students. Last month, USA Today profiled a number of students who were sick or injured on programs that lacked medical evacuation coverage, or any plans for crisis response (see below.)