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Transcript
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.