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Insta-Gator

☀️ Endless Summer 🌤
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There have been several threads concerning special insurance such as Divers Alert Network (DAN), Dive Assure, and the like. There have also been several threads reporting accidents.

Special insurance is a great thing. We subscribe, buy insurance, through DAN. You may choose another agency. However, the insurance doesn't do you as much good as the immediate availability of medical care and a hyperbaric chamber. Toward that end I plan to use the URL below to identify locations with chambers and possibly contact them to understand their continued existence and operational capabilities. You may consider doing the same. :idk:

Worldwide Hyperbaric Chamber Locator, Contact London Recompression & Hyperbaric facilities - The London Diving Chamber


Have fun. Be safe.
 
The availability of Hyperbaric chambers is an interesting way to select a dive destination. This is, certainly, planning for a very unlikely event.

I find it more interesting how people venture and take their children with them to true third world environments without a concern about the utter lack of urgent medical care or facility. They know where the hyperbaric chamber is, no doubt, but the local "hospital" is a dirty version of the high school nurse's office.

People visit paradise and choose to fret over any number of things. Curiously though, they will rent and drive their own vehicles over the sincere recommendations to the contrary. They must drive their vehicle of dubious safety, over crappy roads, with third world liability threats- never noticing that there is nothing approaching a 1950's vintage US Hospital... much less a present day "trauma center".

We worry about what we like to worry about, at least what we find convenient or amusing.

In that light, I would wonder if we would consider a recommendation to carry an Epi-Pen. One might discover being hyper reactive to Jellyfish contact, and that could even be more critical and immediate in terms of effects as compared to DCS. Although deadly hyper-reactivity is rare, there must by 500 Jellyfish stings for every suspected DCS.

I would think that it's better looked at in terms of probabilities versus possibilities.

Still, since they listed a chamber for Belize, it will assuage the fears of the Blue Hole Bottom Dwellers and make that dive safe. It's only a matter of surviving the transit from the diving to the chamber.
 
Chamber availability is fine but what condition is it in and how qualified are the operators?
 
there is also an Iphone app that locates the nearest chamber.
 
Chamber availability is fine but what condition is it in and how qualified are the operators?

And that is why you use the information on the site to answer those questions. Don't rely on some internet list to be absolutely 100% accurate. And, as Doc said, find out what other medical facilities are available for non-DCS emergencies.

It's just an FYI. If anyone chooses not to investigate their chosen dive locations, so be it.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

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