Critical illness: Cancer survival rates push need for protection

This month marks the 33rd anniversary of critical illness insurance, invented by a personal friend of mine, Dr Marius Barnard, a South African heart transplant surgeon. Motivated by the financial hardship he witnessed his patients suffer, he convinced the South African insurance companies to introduce a new type of insurance and in 1983, critical illness cover was born. In the years that followed, it was developed by insurance companies around the world with thousands of people every year having been able to survive financially as a result of it. Very sadly, Marius died of cancer i...