You have a lot to consider when you’re planning to go on a trip. Besides booking accommodations and transportation and drawing up an itinerary, you should also talk to your doctor before traveling anywhere. Here’s why.
1. Disease Prevention
Services like travel medications Rockville MD provide prescriptions and advice to help travelers prevent themselves from catching infectious diseases in various geographic areas. If you’re planning to travel to an area with high rates of malaria, you can get a prescription for malaria prophylaxis before you leave to protect yourself. You can also get altitude sickness medications and antibiotics to treat traveler’s diarrhea.
2. Vaccinations
You should check with your doctor to confirm that you’re up to date on all your routine vaccines, such as tetanus and influenza, before traveling anywhere. There are also diseases that occur in developing countries that are uncommon in the US. So you may need to get vaccinations or boosters before you travel. These include diseases that are uncommon in the US such as yellow fever, typhoid fever and polio.
3. Education
Even if you’re up to date on vaccines and don’t need a prescription to prevent or treat common ailments, talking to your doctor before traveling can help you get educated on other ways to prevent contracting a disease. Depending on where you’re going, you may be advised to wash everything you eat, purify water before drinking or drink bottled water, pack insect repellant and bring a first aid kit. If you’ll be traveling while pregnant or you have a chronic illness, ask your doctor what you’ll need to bring and do to keep yourself healthy while you’re away from home. Your doctor can answer any questions you have about health and safety while traveling and direct you to resources for further information.
If you’re planning to go on a trip, check with your doctor to learn about preventing yourself from coming down with something on your trip and get any vaccinations you may need.