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Don't let illness wreck travel: Be prepared
If you read Gadling's travel series Catching the Travel Bug about being sick on the road, you found stories that attest to the fact that even seasoned travelers get sick from time to time. Travel to a new place and there are germs that your body is just not used to. But, if you're prepared, whatever bug you catch won't stick around to totally ruin a vacation or linger with continued health problems once you return.
Before you embark on a trip, make sure you're immunizations are up to par. According to the World Health Organization, only 34% of the people who travel to places with hepatitis A get immunized against it. Dumb. When heading to places with malaria, only 8% take malaria prevention pills. Double dumb. The result of this neglect is that 30,000 travelers get malaria every year. Gad!
Considering that even a cold can put a damper on a vacation, malaria would do a real number. Typhoid wouldn't be too swell either, another disease that's preventable with a shot. In the Columbus Dispatch article where I read about this laxness towards immunization, one doctor told about a family who refused to get immunized when heading to a country in Africa known to be a high risk area. The teenage boy came home with typhoid as a result. He ate street food, and worse, drank local water.
In general, I think street food is not a problem if it's being served cooked, it's hot--meaning coming right off a grill, and you can see it being prepared, but local water? Nope.
Although getting immunized can add to the sticker price of a trip, it's money well spent. Both malaria pills and immunizations have a certain time frame to be administered in order for them to be effective. If you're planning on going to a country that is high risk where these treatments are recommended, don't wait until it's too late.
By the way, if you do get those shots, hang onto the record of when you got them. Some are good for several years so you can make the sticker price of shots go down by taking another trip to one of these locations before a shot expires.
Here is a link to a resource for what health details need to be taken care of before you travel to most African countries. And, here's a link to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that has other travel health information.
Filed under: Stories, Travel Health
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