There are certain situations in life that are simply unforgettable. Oliver Seroka, who is an employee at time:matters, a company belonging to the Lufthansa Cargo Group, still gets a chill down his spine when he thinks of one particular order. A relaxing mushroom hunt in sunny California turned into a life-threatening situation for three people, in which every minute counted.

A call from a hospital in Munich went into time:matters “Special Service Desk” late in the evening on December 30. The situation was quickly described: 18 ampules of medication needed for the treatment of liver poisoning had to be transported as quickly as possible from Munich to San Francisco, where three patients with a life-threatening poisoning were already at the university hospital’s emergency room.

These three people had accidentally picked highly poisonous amanita phalloides, commonly know as “death caps,” during a mushroom hunt in the surrounding area of San Francisco. The effects thereof became noticeable shortly after consumption: the poison manifested itself in the form of strong gastrospasms, which were accompanied by unbearable pain. Without the fastest possible administration of an antidote, the patients could possibly suffer irreparable liver damage – or in the worst case, even die as a result. The situation was even more dramatic, since two of the people suffering from the illness were only eleven years old – and children’s livers are much more susceptible to the poison than adults’.
 
Oliver Seroka from time:matters immediately pulled out all the stops: “It was necessary to make the impossible possible – since it was right before New Year’s Eve and all of the flights heading to California were fully booked.” In addition, the medication, which is not available anywhere else in the world except for Munich, was not approved by the responsible agency in the United States – the FDA. Nevertheless, the time:matters’ expert did not hesitate “after all, people’s lives were depending on it!” Seroka immediately organized a courier, who arrived at Frankfurt Airport early in the morning. Parallel to this, Seroka had the ampules of medication brought from Munich to Frankfurt. Obtaining FDA authorization to import the medication into the United States proved to be a much greater challenge. Following several phone calls with the attending physicians and the FDA, time:matters finally received the go-ahead to import the medication.

In the meantime, Oliver Seroka had organized the earliest possible flight to San Francisco; working closely together with Lufthansa, it was possible to arrange a seat for the On Board Courier (OBC). “The use of an OBC was the optimal solution for this type of transport,” explains Seroka, “because the OBC standard service includes not letting the shipment out of their sight at any time. Therefore, our courier took the box containing the medication with him in the cabin as a piece of carry-on luggage.” Since the OBC maintained permanent contact with the time:matters headquarters in Neu-Isenburg, the attending physicians in San Francisco were constantly informed about the status of the shipment and were therefore notified as soon as the courier’s plane departed for California.

Following arrival in San Francisco, the courier immediately took a taxi to the university hospital, where he handed over the ampules. Thanks to time:matters’ ability to develop an extremely quick solution, the three patients could be saved; they recovered and did not suffer any permanent damage. If the medication would have been administered only a few hours later, then the outcome of the mushroom hunt could have been much more severe.