What are some of the infections that are most commonly associated with international travel?
The main categories are food-borne illness, mosquito-borne illness and respiratory illness. With mosquito-borne illness, the major diseases we worry about are malaria and yellow fever. From a food-borne transmission perspective, probably the biggest concerns, with regard to incidence, are traveler's diarrhea, hepatitis A and typhoid.
Respiratory illnesses, such as influenza or colds, are actually the second-most common cause of illness while abroad.
Why does your doctor need to know your travel destination?
When you go to a travel medicine physician, you need to know where exactly you're going to be in a particular country because recommendations will vary. For example, if someone is staying in the highlands in Peru, then malaria is not really an issue. If they're heading down into the Amazon basin, then malaria is a big issue.
For travel to Central America and the Caribbean, there are some medicines that we give for malaria called chloroquines. In other areas, such as South America and Africa where the malaria has become resistant to chloroquine, we move on to other medications, such as atovaquone/proguanil or mefloquine.
Also, depending on where someone is going, they may need a vaccine for Japanese encephalitis, bacterial meningitis, rabies, hepatitis B, or polio.
What is traveler's diarrhea?
Traveler's diarrhea affects about 20 percent to 50 percent of visitors to developing regions in Latin America, Africa and portions of Asia. But you can get traveler's diarrhea if you travel to a different geographic area within the United States.
