Tom Zdanius recently spent his 57th birthday alone in the Iseikai International General Hospital in Osaka.<\/p>\n
He suffered a stroke in Japan last month, and has been lying in bed racking up medical bills of about $5,000 a day ever since.<\/p>\n
His brother Lukas Zdanius said it was a terrible situation for the family.<\/p>\n
“He is partially paralysed, he has lost his voice and ability to eat, and a couple of other things,” he said.<\/p>\n
“He is conscious and able to listen, hear and understand.<\/p>\n
“If you use letters of the alphabet, you can get him to write words.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Tom Zdanius and a friend in Japan.\u00a0 (Supplied: Lukas Zdanius)<\/p>\n
No travel insurance<\/p>\n
Mr Zdanius said learning that his brother, who is from Yamba in NSW, had gone overseas without travel insurance caused the family “a lot of angst”.<\/p>\n
“It is a cautionary tale, for sure,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Some people seem to get away with it, but you don’t drive a car without insurance, and you don’t travel without travel insurance.<\/p>\n
“But there is nothing we can do about that, and the next best thing is to pay it out of our own pockets.”<\/p>\n
Mr Zdanius said the family had already made one unsuccessful attempt to organise a medically supervised flight home.<\/p>\n
However, his brother took a turn for the worse and wound up back in the hospital.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Yamba man Tom Zdanius suffered a stroke while on holiday in Japan. (Supplied: Lukas Zdanius)<\/p>\n
Mr Zdanius said the failed attempt had cost about $30,000.<\/p>\n
The family has started a crowdfunding campaign to cover that and other expenses, which Mr Zdanius estimates will eventually exceed $200,000.<\/p>\n
“The issue is we need to get the medevac people to take out nine seats of a commercial plane so they can fit a stretcher in,” Mr Zdanius said.<\/p>\n
“The only alternative is to get a private jet, which is probably about $300,000.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
A cautionary tale<\/p>\n
David Beirman, an adjunct fellow in management and tourism at the University of Technology Sydney, said research showed about 90 per cent of Australians took out insurance before heading overseas.<\/p>\n
“I wouldn’t go anywhere without taking out travel insurance, particularly in countries like Japan and the United States, where medical costs are high,” Dr Beirman said.<\/p>\n
“I know people often consider it a grudge purchase, and I don’t blame them because travel insurance can be quite expensive.<\/p>\n
“But on the other hand, this poor fellow is going through this experience now. Not taking out travel insurance can be a hell of a lot more expensive.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Dr Beirman, who consults with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) on travel advisories and tourism safety, said it would be wise for the family to seek consular assistance.<\/p>\n
“On rare occasions, people can approach DFAT and ask for them to repatriate them in a case of dire need,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It will usually be treated as a loan.”<\/p>\n
The ABC approached DFAT for comment about Mr Zdanius’s case.<\/p>\n
It confirmed it was working to assist a man in Japan, but could not provide more details for privacy reasons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom Zdanius recently spent his 57th birthday alone in the Iseikai International General Hospital in Osaka. He suffered…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,4753,4754,50,4756,4755,4751,4752,4750],"class_list":{"0":"post-3694","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-getting-sick-overseas","10":"tag-health-and-travel","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-overseas-health-crisis","13":"tag-stroke-victims","14":"tag-tom-zdanius","15":"tag-travel-insurance","16":"tag-yamba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}