Southeast Asia: Strong Mobilization of Worldwide Assistance and the Europ Assistance Group

WASHINGTON, Dec. 30, 2004 -- Immediately after the tragic disaster in Southeast Asia, Worldwide Assistance Services (WA) and the Europ Assistance (EA) Group began mobilizing its medical resources to help customers in the region. On December 26th, the Europ Assistance Group set up a special crisis team to face the devastating aftermath of the tsunami in Southeast Asia. The crisis team is coordinating overall operations for all of the group subsidiaries. When and wherever necessary, the crisis team is working with local authorities to help the victims.

In order to cope with this terrible catastrophe, the Europ Assistance Group is mobilizing its worldwide network. EA subsidiaries in Bangkok and Singapore are coordinating staff and resources for the whole area, including transportation between disaster zones and main hospitals in the area, coordination with local and consular authorities to solve problems due to loss of passports, and follow-up of hospitalized clients.

Meanwhile, the Group has sent additional resources to Bangkok. The large majority of the Group's medical assistance cases are located in Thailand. A medical and logistical team is on location, coming from Paris. Moreover, Worldwide Assistance's Medical Director is traveling to work with the team in Bangkok. Worldwide Assistance is also sending nurses to Bangkok and Singapore to assist with medical evacuations.

Right now, most of the Europ Assistance clients that were based in Phuket have been evacuated to Bangkok. The medical team on location is assessing the condition of patients before organizing their transportation back home.

Transportation coordination is going forward. The EA Group is chartering an Airbus 321 aircraft to accommodate 15 stretchers and 50 seated passengers and evacuate victims from Bangkok to Europe.

In addition to medical assistance, beginning on Monday, December 27th, Europ Assistance brought logistical support to its clients, chartering planes to repatriate people to their home countries. Several hundreds of people have already been transported home thanks to Europ Assistance.

Families all over the world have been struck by the catastrophe. In addition to Worldwide Assistance, the US subsidiary, at least nine other Europ Assistance companies have clients in the affected areas: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, and United Kingdom.

For the moment, around one hundred medical cases have been reported, with varying degrees of severity. This is only a provisional figure, however, as new information continues to come into the Europ Assistance headquarters.

Worldwide Assistance and the entire Europ Assistance Group will continue to assist its customers in every way possible.

Worldwide Assistance Services, Inc., located in Washington, DC, is a part of the multinational Europ Assistance Group. Services include emergency medical evacuation and repatriation, medical referrals, case monitoring and claims management. Twenty-four hours a day at 38 assistance centers worldwide, multilingual assistance coordinators answer more than one call per second and handle one assistance case every five seconds. Worldwide Assistance's website is located at http://www.worldwideassistance.com.

Contact:

Jessica Ashley
1-202-331-1609 ext410

Jean Timmons
1-202-331-1609 ext403