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  • Visit a travel clinic before you fly away

    Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/5071...-fly-away.html


    Visit a travel clinic before you fly away
    Last-minute long-haul flights may expose an unprotected traveller to a number of viruses.

    By Peter Pallot
    Last Updated: 4:44PM BST 29 Mar 2009

    People going abroad for work or leisure are not doing enough to protect themselves against deadly infections, according to a leading authority on global disease spread.

    The fashion for last-minute flight booking and further and faster travel was exposing greater numbers to lethal viruses, as well as water-borne, tick-borne and mosquito-borne disease, said Dr Jane Zuckerman, director of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Travel Medicine at the Royal Free Hospital, London.

    Only four in 10 Europeans going to malarial regions sought advice before departure and were exposing themselves to avoidable risk, she said.
    Threats to the individual abroad posed by avian flu, severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) and Japanese encephalitis could be minimised by following medical advice or by vaccination.

    Speaking at a recent press conference in London ? at which drug company Novartis announced it was on track to produce a vaccine against meningitis B in two years ? Dr Zuckerman said there were more infectious diseases than ever.

    "The challenge is keeping up with the changes, the new diseases that emerge and those diseases that re-emerge," she said. "In the 1990s diphtheria re-emerged in what was then classified as the former Soviet Union. That's the challenge, keeping apace of what's going on and looking after the increasing needs of people who increasingly travel.

    "You'll remember that Sars literally crossed the world in hours. Respiratory infection and air travel is going to punch us on the nose, as it did with Sars." Dr Zuckerman, who has been vaccinating children travelling to Zimbabwe against cholera, said the outbreak there was spreading into Malawi.


    Dr Zuckerman, a senior lecturer and honorary consultant at the Royal Free and University College Medical School, London, said the rise in long-haul flights caused huge problems for disease-control agencies.

    Incubation periods were longer than flight schedules, so many infected travellers arrived at their destination unaware that they were about to succumb to a disease that was virtually unknown ? and not expected ? in their destination.


    "Paris doesn't cut it these days, you really have to go to Rio," said Dr Zuckerman. "Long-haul travel is growing and growing fast."

    She pointed to Japanese encephalitis as a particular ? but avoidable ? problem. As people travelled more widely in rural parts of Asia so they increased their risk of contracting the disease that affects the nervous system and is carried by certain mosquitoes. A vaccine is available, but with some side-effects. Better vaccines are in the pipeline.

    Long-haul flights were growing 5.4 per cent a year and Dr Zuckerman doubted if the global credit crunch would have much effect in abating the trend.

    In the year 2020, the total number of international arrivals was predicted to hit 1.6 billion. Of these 1.2 billion would have arrived from within the region and 378 million would be long-haul. By 2020 the top three receiving regions would be Europe (717 million tourists), East Asia and the Pacific (397 million), and the Americas (282 million).

    In summary, Dr Zuckerman emphasised that prevention remained the key message for travellers and expatriates alike.


    Another speaker, Dr George Kassianos, immunisation spokesman for the Royal College of General Practitioners in London, said: "When I think about disease I don't think about how to treat it, I think about how to prevent it. That's the way to go."

    Travel vaccines are available against cholera, diphtheria, hepatitis A and B, influenza, Japanese encephalitis, meningococcal meningitis, polio, rabies, tetanus, tick-borne encephalitis, tuberculosis, typhoid fever and yellow fever.
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