Three General Health And Safety Tips To Ponder Before Travel

Millions of people travel each year around the globe for a number of reasons. Business and personal vacations rate high as do visits to family and friends. Did you know that as many as half of them contract some type of illness or get hurt during their travels? Luckily, there are several things you can do to avoid becoming ill or injured on your next global journey. If you want to stay healthy and safe, be sure to follow these three general health and safety tips before traveling abroad:

1. Educate yourself. Before you even book your trip to a foreign country, you need to find out the risks involved going there. The United States is a fairly safe and healthy place to travel. In comparison, you might have to worry about certain diseases like malaria or countless others in foreign countries. In addition, before you travel, you should find out what type of restrictions or requirements there are. Who knows? You may not even be able to enter some countries! Chances are that if you are entering a third world or developing country, you will have to have certain inoculations against any number of diseases like yellow fever, malaria and hepatitis A.

If you are pregnant or have some type of pre-existing health condition, you need to make allowances for that and see if you would or could be accommodated should you need medical treatment. Are you traveling with pets? There are a whole new set of rules when it comes to traveling with a furry family member.

Depending on where you go and how you travel, you will run across a host of different conditions. If you go on a cruise, you will need to prepare for the possibility of motion sickness. Are you visiting someplace with high elevations? Read up on altitude sickness. Educate yourself about the living conditions in the area that you are visiting and prepare a game plan to ensure that you have clean water to drink and safe food to eat.

2. Prepare yourself. As mentioned above, you will likely need inoculations if entering a foreign country. Your best bet would be to visit a doctor who specializes in travel medicine at least two months before departure. Those inoculations need time to work and some countries require that your shots be administered at a particular time frame before entry into the country.

If you are currently taking any medications, you will want to stock up and take twice as much with you as you will need, just in case any luggage is lost. You will also need a doctor's note on official letterhead that states all of your medications, dosages and what they are for. You may need to provide this information to security officials. In addition, create a little medical travel kit for your luggage so that you can be prepared for any contingencies.

3. Use common sense. Make smart choices when it comes to protecting your safety and health when traveling abroad. Always carry hand sanitizer and even handy antibacterial wipes if you can. You cannot always trust the water supply. The water issues leads into the fact that you should stick with bottled water only. Do not order drinks with ice in them. Stick with pasteurized dairy products and canned or bottled drinks.

If mosquitoes are a major problem where you are going, be sure that you get started on a drug treatment for malaria before traveling abroad and continue it during and afterwards. Avoid wild animals and any type of bird. Use insect repellant with DEET religiously to avoid mosquito bites. There are a ton of issues that can crop up so above all, use your common sense to think things through.

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