The Irish Times
A MEDICAL team is to be transported by the Air Corps to London today to bring an injured Corkman back to Ireland following his emergency transfer from Cambodia.
Michael Riordan (30), from Mallow, who was critically injured in a road incident near the Vietnamese border at the end of last month, was travelling on a stretcher on a Thai Airlines flight from Bangkok to London Heathrow last night, accompanied by a doctor and his mother.
The Air Corps Lear Jet 45 flies to Cork this morning to collect a medical team before continuing to Heathrow to collect Michael and his mother Breda and bring them to Cork. Michael is to be transferred to Cork University Hospital. His father, John Riordan, said the family was “tremendously relieved” Michael would be home.
Ten months ago, Michael left Ireland on a trip that was to culminate in New Zealand for the Rugby World Cup next month.
His father said the family got a call from a doctor at the Calmette Hospital in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on August 1st to say Michael had been seriously injured when the bus he was travelling on in Vietnam had collided with a grain truck. “We contacted the Irish Embassy in Vietnam, who began a search for him. About three to four hours later, he was found in Phnom Penh, semi-conscious, by the British consul. Ireland has no embassy in Cambodia.”
Though Michael had taken out travel insurance 15 days previously, his father said the company refused to cover his transfer to Bangkok for treatment as the insurance had not been taken out in Ireland. “It was dreadful. We had to pay for everything upfront and deal with the language difficulties and the emotional nightmare, thousands of miles away from Michael,” he said. Michael was evacuated to Bangkok on August 2nd at a cost of €11,000 for the air-lift and a €15,000 deposit to the Bangkok hospital, where he had surgery and remained “in a critical condition for the next two weeks”.
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