Health Insurance For Expats In Guinea

The Best Health Insurance For Expatriates Living In Guinea

Posted by Greg Jones on January 24, 2020

If you've searched the web for health insurance that covers expats in Guinea then you are probably for looking for established UK based health insurance providers that will cover your medical costs in Guinea.

Living as an expat in Guinea you want to avoid any nasty unexpected medical costs. In some countries these can amount to hundreds of thousands of pounds for serious medical conditions.

Our advice when looking for health insurance that covers expatriates living in Guinea is to speak to a insurance broker. Health insurance is extremely complicated and if you want complete certainty that Guinea is covered by your policy you should talk with a health insurance broker who can explain which providers will cover medical expenses for expatriates in Guinea and which will exclude it.

There are many advantages to using a insurance broker but the biggest by far is that you're using their insurance training at no cost. They are paid by the insurer (Aviva or Bupa etc) rather than by you so it costs you no extra to use their brokering services.

  • Do you live in many different areas? Some will give you a cheaper premium than offers. A insurance broker will be able to advise whats best.
  • Do you have a hobby that may invalidate your insurance policy? A broker will know this vital information.
  • If you are a couple and one of you has claimed on your policy this year would it be cheaper to separate you both onto two different insurance policies?
  • You've developed a certain medical condition and want to know which policy provider offers the largest amount of cover for it. A broker will know this instantly saving you huge amounts of time and effort.

You can call around every medical insurance provider you can find and ask if they provider cover for expats in Guinea, however this will be a very time consuming process. Each insurer will ask for your medical history because its not normally a simple yes or not if a medical condition is covered or not.

Its much quicker to speak to one health insurance broker which will know which providers on the market offer cover for expats in Guinea and under what terms they do or don't cover it.

Guinea Information

Guinea (/ˈɡɪni/ (listen)), officially the Republic of Guinea (French: République de Guinée), is a coastal country in West Africa. Formerly known as French Guinea (French: Guinée française), the modern country is sometimes referred to as Guinea-Conakry after its capital Conakry, to distinguish it from other territories in the eponymous region such as Guinea-Bissau and Equatorial Guinea. Guinea has a population of 12.4 million and an area of 245,857 square kilometres (94,926 sq mi).

Guinea achieved independence from France in 1958. It has a long history of military coups d'état. In 2010, after decades of authoritarian rule, Guinea held its first democractic election. Although Guinea continued to hold multi-party elections, the country continued to face ethnic conflicts, widespread corruption, and abuses by military and police. Human rights in Guinea remain a controversial issue. In 2011, the United States government claimed that torture by security forces and abuse of women and children (including female genital mutilation) were ongoing human rights issues. In 2021, a military faction overthrew president Alpha Condé and suspended the constitution.

Guinea is a predominantly Islamic country, with Muslims representing 85 per cent of the population. Guinea's people belong to twenty-four ethnic groups. French, the official language of Guinea, is the main language of communication in schools, in government administration, and the media, but more than twenty-four indigenous languages are also spoken.

Guinea's economy is largely dependent on agriculture and mineral production. It is the world's second largest producer of bauxite, and has rich deposits of diamonds and gold. The country was at the core of the 2014 Ebola outbreak.

Guinea is named after the Guinea region. Guinea is a traditional name for the region of Africa that lies along the Gulf of Guinea. It stretches north through the forested tropical regions and ends at the Sahel. The English term Guinea comes directly from the Portuguese word Guiné, which emerged in the mid-15th century to refer to the lands inhabited by the Guineus, a generic term for the black African peoples south of the Senegal River, in contrast to the "tawny" Zenaga Berbers above it, whom they called Azenegues or Moors.

The land that is now Guinea belonged to a series of African empires until France colonized it in the 1890s, and made it part of French West Africa. Guinea declared its independence from France on 2 October 1958. From independence until the presidential election of 2010, Guinea was governed by a number of autocratic rulers.

What is now Guinea was on the fringes of the major West African empires. The earliest, the Ghana Empire, grew on trade but ultimately fell after repeated incursions of the Almoravids. It was in this period that Islam first arrived in the region by way of North African traders.

The Sosso Empire (12th to 13th centuries) briefly flourished in the resulting void, but the Mali Empire came to prominence when Soundiata Kéïta defeated the Sosso ruler Soumangourou Kanté at the Battle of Kirina, in c. 1235. The Mali Empire was ruled by Mansa (Emperors), the most notable being Kankou Moussa, who made a famous hajj to Mecca in 1324. Shortly after his reign, the Mali Empire began to decline and was ultimately supplanted by its vassal states in the 15th century.

The most successful of these was the Songhai Empire, which expanded its power from about 1460 and eventually surpassed the Mali Empire in both territory and wealth. It continued to prosper until a civil war, over succession, followed the death of Askia Daoud in 1582. The weakened empire fell to invaders from Morocco at the Battle of Tondibi, just three years later. The Moroccans proved unable to rule the kingdom effectively, however, and it split into many small kingdoms.

After the fall of the major West African empires, various kingdoms existed in what is now Guinea. Fulani Muslims migrated to Futa Jallon in Central Guinea, and established an Islamic state from 1727 to 1896, with a written constitution and alternate rulers. The Wassoulou or Wassulu Empire was short-lived (1878–1898), led by Samori Toure in the predominantly Malinké area of what is now upper Guinea and southwestern Mali (Wassoulou). It moved to Ivory Coast before being conquered by the French.

European traders competed for the cape trade from the 17th century onward and made inroads earlier.[30] Slaves were exported to work elsewhere. The traders used the regional slave practices.

Guinea's colonial period began with French military penetration into the area in the mid-19th century. French domination was assured by the defeat in 1898 of the armies of Samori Touré, Mansa (or Emperor) of the Ouassoulou state and leader of Malinké descent, which gave France control of what today is Guinea and adjacent areas.