Travel Medicine: Ensuring Traveler's Health

Every year, 45 million Americans make international trips. And almost half of them spend time in underdeveloped or developing countries or in rural areas where the risks of getting an illness are high. In fact, certain studies indicate that approximately 33% of people who travel to Eastern Europe and Third World countries had experienced travel-related illnesses. About 20% of these travelers remained ill after returning home, and 10% sought medical care.

While upper respiratory infections and infectious diarrhea account for majority of travel-related illnesses, cardiovascular disease causes the most number of deaths in travelers. A study on immunizations and travel that appeared in the Emergency Medicine Clinics of North America journal found that such disease causes more than 50 percent of the deaths.

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Travel medicine covers a wide variety of disciplines such as infectious disease, epidemiology, tropical medicine, public health, travel related obstetrics, high altitude physiology, occupational medicine, psychiatry, environmental health, and migration and military medicine. Other major content areas of travel medicine include pre-travel counseling and evaluation specifically designed to ensure the travelers' health, emergency planning during travel, as well as post-travel care and follow-up. The physicians who are knowledgeable in travel medicine give their patients advice on how to mitigate or prevent the most common types of travel-related illnesses.

Travel medicine can be divided into four main categories. These are prevention, medication, assistance, and insurance. Prevention starts with the doctor providing travel advices to the patient and giving him certain vaccinations to possibly ward off certain diseases.

The second category, which is medication, actually involves the use of certain medicines that can provide immediate relief to patients while traveling. Examples are expedition medicine, cruise ship medicine, high-altitude medicine, and others similar to it. Assistance comes in whenever the traveling person was indeed inflicted with a certain type of disease. This includes clinical and hospital assistance. Insurance is necessary for every traveler, as it virtually protects them from the harm that their travels or adventures may bring.

Knowledge of the travel medicines that you need is very crucial to keep yourself in good health whenever you decide to leave your home country. This would keep you from suffering from certain epidemics that could be prevalent in places where you’re going to.