Health

Practicalities Health Where to Start 

Even if you are not unduly concerned about your children's health you may still like to be informed. Unfamiliar foreign bugs can affect even the healthiest child.

Reading

Booklet T5,Health Advice for Traveller
Available from post offices. Produced by the Department of Health, you can also obtain free copies tel: 0800 555 777, or the information is also available, regularly updated, on pages 460-464 of CEEFAX. This covers health risks around the world, major diseases and the precautions to take, planning ahead, and getting treatment around the world, including what reciprocal cover is offered in the countries where the form E111 is accepted (see below). It contains the application form E111 to register for reciprocal care.

Your Child's Health Abroad: A Manual for Travelling Parents Dr Jane Wilson-Howarth and Dr Matthew Ellis Bradt Publications, £8.95
Particularly if visiting places off the beaten track an invaluable reference book. Both authors are well travelled with their children. The book includes information on different medical kits for different regions, preventive care, common and less common ailments, basic medical questions translated into five languages, and potential health risks region by region. It also covers issues like hepatitis, swimming hazards, and walking barefoot, assessing fevers and respiratory infections and immunisation.

Travellers' Health ed. Richard Dawood, OUP, £12.99
If you really want to know the full details of all the trouble you could get into, with 500 pages on the subject. Includes a section on travel in pregnancy.

Specialist Information Services

Information supplied by the following is almost certainly more reliable than your own GP and by their nature, unlike travel centres, these operations are not set up to make an swift profit from selling you the jabs and drugs recommended.

Hospital for Tropical Diseases
Mortimer Market Centre, Capper Street, off Tottenham Court Road, London WC1E 6AU Appointments tel: 020 7388 9600 Also walk-in emergency clinic, out of hours at Accident and Emergency department of UCH.
Travel Clinic Healthline tel: 0839 33 77 33 (39p cheap rate, 49p peak rates, calls lasting on average 7-8 minutes)
Travellers Fax-Back Information Service tel: 0991 991 992

A member of the University College London Hospitals NHS Trust , a UK reference centre for travel medicine and research centre, and offering pre-travel advice, consultant led clinics, post tropical travel screening, a 24-hour travellers' healthline advisory service and 24-hour fax-back information service.

MASTA
Keppel Street, London WC1E 7HT
Travellers Health Line tel: 0906 822 4 100 (60p per minute, calls usually averaging two minutes).
The health line, which covers 250 countries, will supply a written personalised travel health brief, all data validated by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine after you leave a message on the answering service detailing date and destination of travel. If pregnant you should say so when requesting information. Similarly you should give ages of children in the party.
The information is keyed into a databank from which the health brief is compiled and posted back by first class return. This includes recommended and suggested immunisations, malaria advice, health news and news safety reports from the Foreign Commonwealth office and World Health Organisation. The databank is reported updated daily.
The web site includes a 'Before you go' section (including advice on what consulates can and cannot do to help); and information on immunisations, descriptions of various drugs and illnesses, and advice on procedures while travelling, including information for some special needs travellers. It also sells some basic travel health products online.

Nomad Travellers Store and Medical Centre
c/o STA Travel, 40 Bernard Street WC1N 1LJ tel: 020 7833 4114
Healthline tel: 09068 633 414 (60p per minute direct to a health professional). Charges £3 per information print-out.
Run by a couple who have themselves travelled well off the beaten track with their offspring, can provide all kinds of travel health information. There are leaflets like Bite Avoidance & Wound Care in the Tropics, and Diarrhoea - What to Take and When to Take It, though if you want to discuss anything in depth it is best to go into the store in person and see one of the health professionals free of charge. Nomad particularly recommends this if you are travelling with a baby. The company can also provide a tailormade first aid kit after discussion with parents, designed to meet the potential problems of different destinations.

Internet Sites

There are a growing number of medical internet sites of variable quality. Though we haven't found any which covers the issues for children in as much detail as we do, some of the following might be useful for an online check if you encounter a specific problem when on holiday.

24DrTravel
A new travel healthcare web site which has signed up operators including Cosmos and Kuoni to its affiliate programme, ahead of opening its first overseas doctor's surgery in Fuengirola with a second in Mallorca. It offers ‘Instant access to British GPs' and ‘a large database of health and travel information and a comprehensive travel health eShop' selling sterile travel packs, medicines for travellers, tropical kits, screened blood, malaria tablets, vitamins and supplements and books. There is general as well as country specific advice, a special needs, section, travel health news, a medical dictionary and a bit more including an Are You Fit to Travel section.

Fit For Travel
The first UK NHS web site to provide up to date info on travel-related diseases and how to avoid them when abroad, developed by the Scottish Centre for Infection and Environmental health, a UK NHS body responsible for the surveillance of communicable diseases and environmental health hazards. Provides immunisation and malaria advice on a country by country basis. The 'current news' section keeps readers abreast both of recent health developments, including outbreaks. Includes details of specialist associations with a bearing on travel health, and customised advice including children. The site is searchable by a world map, by regional headings or an A-Z index. Straightforward info.

Homeway Medical
West Amesbury, Salisbury, Wiltshire SP4 7B
tel: 01980 626 361
Online shop with travel products and information on planning before you leave, issues like malaria and insect repellents, water systems and security. A brochure is also available. Predominantly catering to more long-haul destinations. Includes a sterile medical pack for under sixes and non-Deet insect repellent. Also gives product advice on the phone.

Med4u
An on line health consultation service.

MedicDirect
A site hosted by NHS consultants, includes a travel health section currently one of the better available, though there is nothing specifically covering children. The consultants involved are contracted to provide original content at least every three months for the next five years. Nothing specifically on children.

Net Doctor
Describing itself as the UK's leading consumer health web site, has a travel medicine section.

Shoreland Travel Health Online
Provides health information by destination (220-plus countries), by ailment, plus travel medicine providers in the US and elsewhere.

Surgery Door
The Fit for Travel section includes information on vaccinations recommended, latest health news, articles about travel health. Includes an on-line health store, books on health plus software, and disability aids.

Also a UK health-related weather forecast.

Tropical Screening Services
tel: 020 7830 9683
A private health check service designed for the returned traveller concerned about the possibility of having caught a tropical disease and whose GP may not be up to speed on this type of problem. The site details services offered by the Soho Centre for Health & Care, London: comprehensive post-trip consultation and screening from a well-travelled and appropriately qualified doctor.
It includes a post-trip consultation and screening from a well-travelled and appropriately qualified doctor. There is also the option to join Club TSS which, for an annual fee, entitling member to email consultations while travelling.

US Center for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention
Hotline tel: +1 404 332 4559.
The 'Travelers' Health' section of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) site offers information by country; by type of disease, or by type of traveller: children, pregnant or breast-feeding mothers, travellers with disabilities, and those with HIV. Area-specific information includes recommended precautions to take before, during and after travel, plus information on specific diseases, and how they are transmitted. A 'Traveler Checklist', includes hints on what to do in emergencies, and an 'In the News' section, details recent outbreaks. It's not the most reassuring of sites.