'Thunderbirds' answer Kiwi SOS'

Photo: Reuters

Bear menu: Sometimes a little pick-me-up is barely needed.

Relevant offers

POLAR BEARS were circling the Kiwi cameraman's hut on the remote Russian Arctic island and the company that helicoptered him and two colleagues in wasn't coming to their rescue.

The Russian firm appeared to want an extra payment in return for rescuing the cameramen working for Dunedin-based Natural History NZ, a TV production subsidiary of Newscorp which specialises in making wildlife documentaries, Tim Mepham, head of corporate services at Natural History NZ, said.

The bears, which are the world's largest land predator and can easily rip off a hut door if hungry enough, posed an imminent threat to the trio's lives.

The New Zealand diplomatic corps got involved, Mepham said, but recalls it wasn't diplomatic pressure but International SOS – a kind of corporate Thunderbirds – that effected a rescue.

"The diplomats couldn't get permission to fly into Russian airspace. International SOS were contacted and within 24 hours a helicopter arrived and picked those people up and delivered them safely back onto the mainland."

Mepham joked International SOS must have good contacts in the Russian mafia, but said: "I don't know, but these guys came off the Arctic ice and lived to tell the tale."

International SOS, which held a client conference in Auckland last week, is a global organisation paid by companies to help them understand and plan for the risks of sending staff and their families abroad on business – and in extreme cases like that of the cameramen, to extract them from life-threatening situations.

The New Zealand arm of the rescue agency, which has some 66 offices, 29 medical clinics and 26 "alarm centres" worldwide, now employs 30 staff in Auckland, where it launched 15 years ago.

Former Australian SAS man Tony Ridley, its regional security and intelligence director, told conference delegates it was the world's emergency airline, doing more than 16,300 evacuations a year for staff of corporate clients, including more than half the companies in the Fortune 500. It is also the only private company outside China permitted to make emergency flights in Chinese airspace.

"It's the flight no-one wants to be on," said Ridley, though much of the company's work was in planning and risk mitigation so such flights were not necessary. But whenever there's an international crisis, it will be gathering up and spiriting away company execs and staff caught up in the devastation, whether it be the earthquake in Haiti or Chile or a terrorist attack like that in Mumbai, India, in 2008.

International SOS is membership-based and companies pay a fee based on the number of "travellers" they have, though they also pay separately for interventions like emergency evacuations, which business insurers usually end up paying.

Natural History NZ, Mepham said, did have another of its personnel "medi-vacked" afterhaving a leg savagely mauled by a leopard in South Africa.

Despite circling polar bears and leopards, car accidents and heart attacks make up the bulk of the medical emergencies handled by International SOS, said Dr David Cooper, its regional medical director.

Often those sent overseas were middle-aged executives in a higher risk category for heart attacks and companies should not under-estimate the cost, difficulty and reputational risks they ran in dealing with such event.

Conference members included Auckland and Massey universities, as well as public companies such as Goodman Fielder.

THE RISKS

Medical risks of travelling abroad

In every 100,000 travellers:

50,000 will develop some health problem

8000 will see a doctor

5000 will be confined to bed

1100 will be incapacitated

50 will be admitted to a hospital

30 will be evacuated

1 will die

Source: Journal of Infectious Diseases.

- © Fairfax NZ News