SUMMARY
International SOS has led medical services operations on offshore installations globally and managed clinical cases where patients were presented with signs and symptoms of known infectious illnesses. Most recently (3) cases of mumps were identified among the work force on an operating oil and gas rig offshore Guyana in the Caribbean Sea. Due to the anticipated risk to the health of the offshore employees and the risk to operational continuity, certain steps in case management, needed to ensure proper patient health care, employees' safety and ongoing operations, were recommended to be followed. While this paper will describe the recommended action steps that were followed in the management of mumps cases as best practices in infectious diseases management on offshore installations, it can be adopted as a guideline towards management of various infectious illnesses as well, with special consideration to the different diseases specifics like mode of transmission and infectivity, thus prevention techniques and infection control procedures.
