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Travel Health
Consider the following:
- Tourism and business travel have been steadily
increasing over the past several decades. As
global communications and long-distance transportation
improve, people are going further and staying
longer at their destinations.
- More and more travelers are being exposed
to infections for which they have little or
no immunity, and they are not always informed
about proper prevention and treatment options.
- Exposure can happen either through natural
elements in the environment, such as mosquitoes,
or through risky behavior that people are more
likely to engage in while they are traveling,
such as casual unprotected sex or a visit to
an unsafe tattoo parlor.
- The risks to travelers' health and safety
can vary widely between countries and regions,
even between regions in the same country. For
example, lodging that offers air-conditioned
rooms will cut down the risk of malaria, while
open-air village lodging offers greater risks
of exposure to mosquito bites that infect people
with the disease.
Complicating the picture, are the facts that
some diseases present a higher risk during certain
seasons, some diseases mutate and migrate, and
that disease outbreaks are unpredictable. Some
diseases that were previously eradicated in certain
regions of the world have re-emerged. For example,
recent cases of polio have surfaced in Haiti,
the Dominican Republic, Botswana and parts of
Western Africa including Benin, Chad, Burkina
Faso, Cameroon, Central Africa Republic, Cote
d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Togo. These countries
had previously been declared polio-free.
As of March 2004, the mosquito-borne disease
of malaria has been declared resistant to the
antimalarial drug Chloroquine (Aralen) in the
Phillippines. A different medication must now
be used to prevent
malaria in this region.
All of the above isn't meant to scare people
away from travel. Traveling is a wonderful experience,
but it requires preparations. To stay healthy
away from home, a trip to a travel medicine clinic
is as important as insuring your passport and
entry visas are in order.
The specialized staff at a travel medicine center
is familiar with the health concerns in each
country you intend to visit.
- They will be able to recommend any vaccines
you may need before the trip and administer
them at the center.
- They will also recommend any prescriptions
you should carry with you to areas where the
quality of health care is questionable and/or
areas where preventive prescriptions are recommended.
Furthermore, the staff at a travel medicine
center keeps up with the latest alerts and advisories
that are issued by both the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health
Organization (WHO).
- Information from the WHO and CDC helps travel
specialists learn about disease outbreaks that
are happening around the globe; they also learn
about new studies discussing prevention and
treatment of diseases that are of concern to
travelers.
- Travel medicine specialists get regular updates
about issues such as drug resistance of disease-causing
organisms, which in turn helps them customize
the best current preventive treatments for
any area of the globe.
The staff at the center will be able to integrate
required travel medicine regimens with your current
medical regimen, so that medications don't counteract
(interact badly with) each other or render each
other ineffective. A visit to a travel medicine
specialist should take place at least 6 to 8
weeks prior to your departure, but even a shorter
interval can benefit you.
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