On Sunday, April 6, the United States Coast Guard flew an infant with a breathing problem from a port in the Bahamas to Miami Children’s Hospital. The infant was onboard Royal Caribbean’s The Enchantment of the Seas in Coco Cay, the Bahamas when it started having difficulty breathing. Apparently, the medical team onboard stabilized the 10-month-old before flying to Miami. No new updates on the status of the infant have been released.
Cruising is a fun and relaxing vacation. However, unlike most vacations on land, adequate medical care is hard to come by when injuries happen at sea. All cruise lines provide a medical treatment center for their injured passengers. These facilities are severely limited in their capabilities and staff. Oftentimes, even the treating physician is not licensed to practice medicine in the US. Also, these treating physicians are oftentimes third-party contractors that the cruise line hires to avoid liability if their treatment is somehow negligent. There are some ways to get around these issues if the cruise line is negligent in its medical treatment of your injuries, but it takes an attorney with extensive knowledge of both maritime and personal injury law.
Cruise lines have been all over the news over the past year or so. From Carnival ships breaking down in the middle of the Caribbean to the Costa Concordia disaster, there seems to be a huge problem with safety in the cruising industry. Despite this downward trend in safety, the number of cruise ships has increased over the past year from 393 to 410 (this number includes all vessel sizes). Of the 21.3 million people who booked a cruise last year, more than half of them came from the US. With that many people on the water, there are bound to be injuries. The cruise industry has staff attorneys that handle these claims all day every day. If you get injured on a cruise, it’s important that you hire legal counsel immediately to counter the cruise industry’s staff attorneys. The laws at sea are different than on land, and most times you have much less time to file a claim. Call a trusted maritime attorney to help protect your rights and get you the compensation you deserve.
