Diving accidents in Indonesia

Indonesia is one of the world's great dive destinations and the Foreign Office still flags it. Its advice states "diving school standards are not always as high as in the UK" and lists what to do:

• check a dive operator's credentials
• make sure you're covered by insurance
• make sure safety equipment is available on the boat, particularly oxygen
• ask about safety precautions, including the ability to transfer divers to a hyperbaric chamber

For anyone without previous experience it adds: ask the instructor what cover they offer before signing up, and check what to do if something goes wrong.

Source: UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office — Indonesia travel advice (full advisory), read 24 September 2026.

"Ability to transfer divers to a hyperbaric chamber" sounds procedural. In Indonesia it is about distance.

Decompression illness needs recompression, and recompression needs a chamber. Diving off a remote site in an archipelago of thousands of islands means the relevant question is not whether a chamber exists somewhere in the country — it is how many hours you are from one, by what transport, and who arranges it at 3pm on a boat.

Ask the operator directly, before you board: where is the nearest chamber, how would I get there, and who pays for the transfer.

Diving is one of the most common exclusions in ordinary policies, and the exclusions are usually conditional rather than absolute — they turn on depth, on certification, and on whether you were diving with a qualified instructor.

So "am I covered for diving" is the wrong question. The useful ones are: to what depth, with what certification, does it include recompression treatment, and does it include the transfer to the chamber as well as the treatment itself. A policy that pays for the chamber but not the boat and ambulance to reach it has a hole in exactly the wrong place.

Indonesia's public scheme is not the fallback for most foreign residents: Presidential Regulation 82 of 2018 defines participants as including foreigners who have worked here at least six months.

For anything beyond local capability the pathway runs to Singapore, and the Foreign Office states medical evacuation can cost tens of thousands of pounds. A dive injury that needs both recompression and evacuation is the most expensive single day most residents could have.

Source: Peraturan Presiden No. 82 Tahun 2018 tentang Jaminan Kesehatan, Pasal 1 angka 2 — JDIH BPK, read 24 September 2026.

• Ask where the nearest chamber is and how long a transfer takes.
• Confirm oxygen is on the boat — the advice names it specifically.
• Get your insurer's diving terms in writing: depth limit, certification requirement, recompression, and transfer.
• Do not rely on the operator's own cover without reading what it actually is.

We are an insurance introducer, not an insurer, and nothing here is medical or diving advice. Pre-existing conditions are excluded and cover is governed by the Regency Assurance policy wording, including its terms on hazardous activities.