A travel agent stepped in at the 11th hour to book flights and transfers for a patient in need of a life-saving kidney transplant.
Travel Counsellors’ Christian Mascarenhas logged on in the middle of the night to make arrangements for the patient to fly from Gibraltar to London to undergo the urgent operation at Hammersmith Hospital.
The surgery, for a male patient, was a success and he is now recovering in hospital.
Mascarenhas, the first and only Travel Counsellors agent on the British overseas territory, is contracted by the Gibraltar Health Authority (GHA) to arrange travel for medical emergencies.
He received a call in the early hours of the morning last Monday from a GHA staff member who said a donor had become available and the patient needed to be in London by 10.30am.
“I jumped on my laptop and arranged the flight from Malaga at 7.30am, as well as the taxi to the airport and the ambulance to be there to pick him up on arrival,” Mascarenhas said.
“I got a lovely message on Wednesday from the client to say the operation had gone well.”
Last year, during a Travel Counsellors conference in Glasgow, Mascarenhas was up all night organising a chartered air ambulance for a patient who needed a heart transplant. He also arranges travel for another customer who has to go back and forth to London to see his baby who is sick in hospital.
Mascarenhas joined Travel Counsellors in 2017 having worked as a travel agent for 22 years. He used to be based on the high street, but is now in an office and employs two assistants.
More: Travel Counsellors reports record January
