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Far East Regional Focus 45<br />
Ole Stene, Managing Director,<br />
Aboitiz Jebsen Bulk Transport Corp.<br />
“As a ship management<br />
company and as a<br />
manning company, it is<br />
our responsibility to<br />
educate and increase<br />
health awareness among<br />
our seafarers”<br />
medical issues commonly facing seafarers<br />
today through our Officers and Crew<br />
Conferences. We also update our business<br />
partners on medical issues during our annual<br />
‘principals conference’ so that, together, we<br />
can resolve certain issues,” he said.<br />
Mr Stene added: “Last month, we organised<br />
a seminar regarding health awareness with<br />
the theme ‘Let’s Keep Our Health to Enjoy Our<br />
Wealth’ where we invited experts to talk about<br />
sickness prevention. We believe that the<br />
priority should be on prevention to avoid the<br />
need for treatment and rehabilitation. The<br />
seminar was attended not only by the crew<br />
but also by their families. We have ‘lifestyle<br />
diseases’ nowadays and to effect change, we<br />
should educate not only the crew but his<br />
family as well. Especially the one who does all<br />
the cooking: As they say, we are what we eat.”<br />
So as managing director of Aboitiz Jebsen,<br />
what is your strategy to ensure that seafarers<br />
are cared for and that they remain healthy<br />
and medically fit onboard?<br />
“First and foremost it is ensuring that our<br />
crews are sent to quality Pre-Employment<br />
Medical Clinics. All our clinics are accredited<br />
with the Philippines’ Department of Health<br />
(DOH) as well as international organisations.<br />
“We also have to ensure that our clinics<br />
maintain good quality service levels, we have<br />
a team which conducts annual ocular<br />
inspections as well as audits to evaluate<br />
service to the crew in terms of quality,<br />
equipment, speed and coordination with our<br />
office personnel.<br />
“We also require our clinics to send us<br />
updated reports on a daily basis so we can<br />
monitor their progress and ensure that only<br />
Highlighting the health<br />
and safety issues affecting<br />
Filipino seafarers is<br />
important, especially<br />
when you consider the<br />
dominant role they play<br />
in manning the world’s<br />
ships<br />
medically fit crew are deployed and high<br />
medical-risk sailors are disqualified. In case of<br />
need, a dialogue is set up between our<br />
crewing managers and our medical experts<br />
to address certain concerns. Where and when<br />
possible, we coordinate with our business<br />
partners to provide ‘thorough’ PEME packages<br />
to immediately diagnose and resolve<br />
common medical issues. There are certain<br />
diseases which cannot be detected by the<br />
basic PEME package which may result in the<br />
crew’s repatriation due to sickness. As we all<br />
know this is a costly transaction which we do<br />
our best to prevent,” he added.<br />
And it doesn’t stop there. Ship managers<br />
september <strong>2010</strong> ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ maritime medical international
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