When traveling abroad, there are a variety of options for travel health and travel medicine. Many individuals don’t know where to go or what to do when starting their journey. Often, these individuals embark on a long search, but what they find may not be best option for them. We’ll look at some of the pre-travel options and consider what is best for travelers visiting various places around the globe.

The Bookworm

Many people use guides like Frommers or Lonely Planet to help plan their trips. While these guides can be extremely helpful in developing an itinerary, they do not provide the necessary health advice for travelers headed to exotic locales. These guides may point out that a yellow fever vaccine is required for entry to Cameroon, but they are unlikely to mention that chikungunya is also a risk.

One of the primary issues with these guides is that, due to their inherent nature as published materials, it isn’t possible for them to contain the most up-to-date data. This can make staying healthy while traveling more difficult and may leave a traveler unaware of typhoid, cholera or hepatitis A outbreaks that come up and present additional and immediate health risks.

In short, guides are great for planning your trip, but they are unlikely to help you stay at peak travel health.

The Public Problem Solver

Public health systems throughout the United States and Canada are uniquely suited to help travelers, but they often require exact information. It’s not uncommon for someone to have to know exactly which vaccines they will need before going to their appointment. This requires additional research on the part of the traveler, which can take a lot of effort.

These centers do not always carry vaccines like Japanese encephalitis or even yellow fever in stock, which could mean a traveler would have to wait days or weeks before he or she could begin the immunization process. This could make completing a vaccination series impossible, depending on how much time remains before the departure date.

Though public health systems are very helpful, and necessary, as part of the vaccination effort, they are not always the best option when it comes to international travel.

The Webmaster

This traveler is on the right track, but he or she will spend a lot of time planning and researching. The Centers for Disease Control, Health Canada, World Health Organization and many other groups provide extremely helpful information on which vaccinations and types of preventative care someone may want to take before traveling. Generally, this information is on the cutting-edge of what is happening globally and provides wonderful advice for anyone who needs it.

The Webmaster then needs to find a public health center or a travel health clinic that is able to provide these services to him or her. This could lead to similar problems as those encountered by the Public Problem Solver, making trip planning just a problematic for this traveler as the others.

The Passport Health Patron

Travelers that come to Passport Health receive all the advantages of the previous groups but without the hassle. Every traveler receives a personalized consultation with a registered nurse who will go through the specific risks he or she may come in contact with while traveling. No need to research or worry, Passport Health has already done it for you. We are in constant contact with the CDC, WHO and other organizations and use that information to give you a picture of what is going on in the health sphere in your destination as well as tailored tips to keep you healthy overseas.

Every Passport Health clinic always has vaccines on hand including the sometimes illusive Japanese encephalitis vaccination. No need to come back for something that wasn’t available when we first saw you.

With Passport Health, you have a one-stop-shop, an advantage that will help you stay healthy and worry-free before, during, and after your trip.

To learn more about Passport Health’s travel medicine services, see our page on the subject.

Planning a trip in the near future? Comment below, on our Facebook page or via Twitter about how you plan to prepare.