The Managers have released, on September 22, 2015, the Club’s latest loss prevention DVD – 'Fit for Life'.
The launch took place at a premiere screening of the film at the Barbican Center, central London before an invited audience of a number of the Club’s Member, broker and professional contacts who are actively involved in raising awareness of crew health.
This DVD, produced with the financial support of The Ship Safety Trust, is directed towards improving the health and fitness of seafarers for the ultimate benefit of those individuals, their families and their employers.
'Fit for Life' is a response to a persistently high exposure to crew illness claims. On investigation, many of those claims reveal the existence of medical conditions that ought to have been detected at the stage of the pre-employment medical examination (PEME). It is vitally important that seafarers are fit for seagoing employment. There is no way of knowing when a particular medical condition might incapacitate an individual or where the ship might be at that time. Consequently, seafarers who are not fit represent a potential and serious risk not only to themselves, but also to their colleagues and others outside the vessel.
However, each serious crew illness claim that the Club encounters represents much more than just a financial cost to the Club and its Members. For the individual who is the victim of illness, the consequences can be tragic and devastating. In order to minimize these potential impacts upon individuals and their families, the Club’s Managers strongly believe that there are benefits to be derived from informing and educating seafarers about health and fitness, and the actions they can take to improve their well-being.
The DVD examines the most frequently encountered conditions that can result in unfitness – for example obesity, high blood pressure or hypertension, diabetes, and hepatitis. The principal doctors from some of the Club’s recommended PEME clinics explain each of these conditions and their causes. The inter-relationship between obesity, hypertension and diabetes, and the causal effect that lifestyle has on the chance of developing these conditions is emphasised. The point is made that all seafarers have the means to minimise the risk of developing these conditions through the lifestyle choices they can make associated with diet, exercise and giving up smoking.
As with other of the Club’s loss prevention DVDs 'Fit for Life' also features useful reference material, such as exercise routines that can be followed without the need for equipment, links to relevant websites with a focus on crew health and well-being, and an interactive Body Mass Index (BMI) calculator and chart.
Chris Adams, Head of European Syndicate and Loss Prevention said: “We hope that one of the most important contributions that this DVD will make to crew health and well-being is the encouragement it provides for seafarers to view the PEME positively and to regard it as the means by which the state of their health can be determined at the time of examination, and then monitored annually. In this way there can be early warning of the onset of any condition that might ultimately threaten fitness and provide the opportunity to remedy or control that condition, through a combination of lifestyle adjustments and medication, and thereby prolong the seafarer’s career.”
