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TAKE CARE
Winter 2012
Travel Clinics Australia Charter
Our goal is to protect the health of
travellers, by providing exemplary
clinical care along with specific
advice and information for each
traveller.
All TCA members are experienced
travel health doctors.
More locations for greater
convenience.
Better service at competitive prices.
Services include:
• Personalised service by qualified doctors
• Expert up-to-date advice with consultation
• Online database of travel health information
• All vaccinations on site
• Corporate health services
• Malaria tablets and travel medications
• International certificates of vaccination
• WHO accredited for yellow fever and all travel and all travel vaccinations
• Traveller’s first aid kits and accessories
• Mosquito bite prevention items insect nets, permethrin kit
• The Traveller’s Pocket
Medical Guide
Travel Clinics Australia
1300 369 359
Travel Health information
1900 969 359*
*Call cost $5.50 (incl gst)
Higher from mobile or public phones.
• We would like to thank everyone that turned up to our recent
Singapore Travel Clinic Conference. We hope you enjoyed it.
Photo © Mel van Buuren 2012
Influenza (flu) Vaccine
Influenza (or ‘flu’) is sometimes
dismissed as not being a serious
illness. Many people will refer to the
common cold as ‘the flu’. However,
influenza is a serious infection and is
not the same as the common cold.
Flu is very easy to pick up when
travelling, from checking in at the
airport, to the cabin on the plane, to
your final destination. There are so
many places to pick up this highly
contagious virus which is spread by
airborne droplets or transferred from
any hard surfaces.
Symptoms include a high fever,
extreme malaise, tiredness and
lethargy so the extent that affected
individuals may be unable to get out
of bed. Hundreds of deaths occur
every year in Australia as a result of
this disease.
Prevention is your best defence with
vaccination routinely recommended
for all travellers. As well as vaccination
minimise the risk of infection with
careful hand washing and the use of
hand sanitising gel when travelling.
Common Myths
Despite widely held belief, influenza
vaccines cannot give a person the
flu as none of the influenza vaccines
used in Australia contain live virus. The
vaccines used are either split-virion or
sub-unit (inactivated) vaccines, which
only contain the surface structures of the
virus, rather than infectious particles.
The incubation period for influenza
is between 24–72 hours, and the
vaccine takes 7–14 days to produce
protection, so occasionally a vaccine
recipient may contract the influenza
virus during this period.
The belief that the vaccine has
resulted in ‘the flu’ could result
from misinterpretation of either mild
vaccine side effects or coincidental
infection from other respiratory
viruses, both of which can cause ‘flulike’ symptoms. All vaccines elicit an
immune response. Some of these
responses can include a mild fever
and headache, amounting to ‘flu-like’
symptoms. This could result in the
mistaken belief that the vaccine has
given them ‘the flu’, these side effects
may occur with many different types
of vaccines.
TAKE CARE
Winter 2012
Polio NOT yet eradicated
Whooping Cough
(Pertussis)
According to Australia’s Department of
Health, pertussis activity remains high
throughout the country. More than 33,000
There is a popular belief that Polio no
longer exists but while the number of
cases has dramatically decreased,
new cases have been reported
in more than 22 previously poliofree countries, including Benin,
Botswana,
Burkina,
Cameroon,
Central African Republic, Chad,
Ghana, Sudan, Togo, Indonesia
and Burma.
The four remaining polio- endemic
countries are Afghanistan, India,
Nigeria and Pakistan.
The virus is shed from the throat
and from the gastro intestinal tract
in the faeces, faecal shedding can
continue for several weeks, travellers
can therefore infect contacts after
returning home. Until it is eradicated
travellers especially to Africa and
Asia should continue to maintain
immunity against this disease.
One of our own TCA doctors
contracted Polio in 1958 in Glasgow
where there were 150 cases that
year. After the introduction of the
vaccine and mass immunisation
program around the same time, that
number decreased to 5 cases the
following year. This highlights the
effectiveness of the vaccine and the
need to continue vaccinations to
reduce the spread of the disease.
Polio vaccine is available at your
local Travel Clinic either on its own or
combined with Tetanus, Diphtheria,
and Whooping cough vaccine.
• A Virion
Even though Polio is part of the
routine childhood immunisations,
boosters are recommended every
10 years if going to a potentially
endemic area.
Published by Travel Clinics Australia. Head Office:
t: 03 9528 1222 f: 03 9532 9555 e: [email protected] w: www.travelclinic.com.au
cases of pertussis in both children and
adults were reported in 2011. This is a
significant increase over the average
incidence,
with thousands of cases
have been reported since January
2012. Many adults lack immunity to
pertussis even if they were vaccinated
during childhood all adults, including
individuals who have had a tetanus or
tetanus-diphtheria-only vaccine in the
last 10 years, should receive a one-time
booster dose of Tdap (adult acellular
pertussis-containing vaccine such as
Boostrix or Adacel.