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<\/p>\nEuropean diving was booming in the early 1980s with the advent of dive travel and the birth of dive destinations like Sharm El Sheikh and the Maldives. Predictably incidents of decompression illness (DCI) were also on the rise. In fact, the field of hyperbaric medicine was just emerging as an important medical specialty and new chambers were being installed at popular diving destinations.<\/p>\n
In response to the boom in diving, Dr. Alessandro Marroni, an underwater and hyperbaric medicine physician and diver, created International Diving Assistance (IDA) with a small network of diving physicians to provide 24\/7 medical assistance to traveling divers in need. His efforts paralleled those of Duke University\u2019s Dr. Peter Bennett in the US, who had launched a 24-hour government-sponsored, emergency hotline to address dive injuries under the moniker National Diving Accident Network (NDAN).<\/p>\n
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Dr. Marroni soon realized that medical consultancy, by itself, was insufficient when divers were injured abroad. A specialized insurance plan was needed to pay for expensive hyperbaric treatments that traditional travel insurance carriers didn\u2019t want to cover. In addition, some countries like Spain and Finland did not cover hyperbaric treatment in the national insurance.<\/p>\n
Consequently, Dr. Marroni\u2019s wife, Filomena De Angelis, an archeologist and diver who later became DAN Europe\u2019s managing director, began negotiations for IDA with a large insurance group. Their challenge? Convincing the carrier that scuba diving was not dangerous. Insurance companies were very reluctant to cover the strange and not well understood phenomena of decompression illness.<\/p>\n
In fact, travel and accident insurance carriers typically exclude illnesses and pre-existing medical conditions. For that reason, it took them a while to understand that DCI was a particular kind of diving accident similar to other types of sport injuries on land.<\/p>\n
De Angelis was successful, and in 1982, IDA launched the first worldwide diving accident insurance, which was sold as an add-on to IDA members, similar to today. Recognizing the needs of its professional diving members, the organization also began offering liability insurance at the same time. Though a few general insurers offered professional diving liability insurance in the early 1980s, it was limited in coverage, and very expensive, as diving was considered an extremely dangerous activity.<\/p>\n
In 1986,<\/span> after a fruitful meeting with Dr. Bennett, IDA became DAN Europe, and NDAN became the Divers Alert Network (DAN) US. A year later,<\/span> DAN US later launched its own diving insurance program in conjunction with a third party provider.[1]<\/sup><\/p>\n