(Adapted from a W.O.N. Baja Beat column originally published in Western Outdoor News, December 23, 2002.

The Binational Emergency Medical Care Committee (BEMCC), helps seriously sick or injured tourists get out of Mexico. If you travel in Mexico, their 24-hour-per-day emergency number could literally save your life.

The Binational Emergency Medical Care Committee is a nonprofit organization run on a volunteer basis for more than 25 years by a remarkable woman named Celia Diaz. It operates with a volunteer staff out of a crowded suite of offices in Chula Vista, Calif., and it's a beehive of activity fielding about 500 requests for help or information per week.

The minute I walked into Diaz' office, I knew I would like her. Her office is so crowded with files and books, you have to wiggle your butt around in order to sit down. You can't get a word in edgewise, because the phone rings every 30 seconds or so. Sometimes, two telephone lines go off at once.

Sitting on a table behind Diaz are four large Rolodex files, jammed to bursting with index cards containing the telephone numbers of hundreds of decision-makers on both sides of the border: American and Mexican chiefs of police, heads of customs agencies, mayors and senators, the FBI, Coast Guard, Army, Navy, Air Force, Immigration, hospitals, insurance companies, ambulances, air evac companies--you name it.

Why all the fuss?

The problem is that in Mexico some medical facilities view sick or injured tourists as cash cows to be milked until they are dry. If sudden trauma happens to you in unfamiliar territory, the chances are quite good that you may end up at one of these questionable "clinicas." This is because they pay commissions to taxi drivers, ambulance drivers, police, anybody on the street, to bring them patients.

(Note: I am sorry to say that I, personally, know of two people who were held in these types of Mexican clinicas too long. Both died. In one case, of injuries suffered in an automobile accident after BEMCC was called too late to save him, in the other case, after a man in his 70s was held in Mexico for five days after suffering a heart attack and died as he was finally being evacuated. BEMCC was never called in the second case.)

If you end up in this kind of clinica, you are given medical care, but you are also detained as long as possible, so that more fees can be charged. After they've run your bill up as high as possible, they will then call an air evac company...and collect a commission on that too. You may then be detained even further, until you can settle your account (perhaps many thousands of dollars) in hard-to-obtain quick cash. Meanwhile, your life may be in danger because you are not receiving critical medical care.

Enter Celia Diaz's BEMCC.

When you call the Binational Emergency Medical Care Committee (toll free, 24-hours-per-day, from anywhere in Mexico) with a serious emergency, Diaz instantly mobilizes her lawyers, physicians, law enforcement officers, military commanders, politicians, and anybody else it takes to get you out of there, right now, cash or no cash.

In the past 25 years, she has done this for more than 13,000 Americans in deep trouble. If necessary, BEMCC will apply "pressure" to get you out and whisk you back across the border. Although there are no absolute guarantees, Diaz says that over the last quarter-century BEMCC has not yet failed to get results.

To register with the non-profit BEMCC, you pay $30 per year (fully tax deductible), and provide information about your regular U.S. health and accident insurance coverage, which you should review to be sure that it covers foreign emergency treatment and evacuation. (Note that your regular health insurance probably already covers evacuation, possibly making separate air evac policies redundant.)

You receive a registration card with a toll-free 800 number good from anywhere in Mexico and instructions on what to do in case of emergency, including fatalities in which bodies must be brought back.

Using your regular insurance as a guarantee, BEMCC will negotiate with the clinica to settle your account and allow you to be air evacuated, without your having to come up with large amounts of instant cash. Once you call them, BEMCC takes over and coordinates necessary arrangements to bring you back.

Again, there are no absolute guarantees, but if you have a serious medical emergency in Mexico, you are much, much better off, and your chances of survival are infinitely better, if you have the BEMCC on your side. I personally, would not travel to Mexico without having their number ready--just in case.

Click here for more information on BEMCC emergency evacuations from Mexico.

Or click here to join BEMCC immediately online.

It could save your life.