Medications and prescriptions

A traveler's guide to carrying medications and getting prescriptions filled on the road

Pills

Prescription meds

Take enough of any prescription medication you’re on to last your trip plus one week (just in case).

Keep all pills in their original vials—that and an innocent smile will help prove to customs officials that they're prescription drugs, not narcotics.

Pack meds in your carry-on

Many folks mistakenly pack their mini first aid kit in their toiletry bag, since that is where they keep their medicine cabinet is at home. This is silly, because the odds of needing it while you are in bed asleep are minimal.

Insetad, toss it into your daypack, where it can do you some good while you're on the plane and out and about your sightseeing.
Bring along extra written prescriptions in each drug's generic, chemical name, not a brand name. This type of prescription will help customs officials approve it, and foreign druggists fill it.

Over-the-counter meds

From the over-the-counter department, the only necessities to toss into your mini first aid kit are:

Don't overpack meds

Don't bother carrying tons of the stuff. A few tabs of each will suffice.

Everything you can buy at home they carry (or something similar) in most of the rest of the world, easily obtainable from any corner farmacia. Remember: Bayer is a German company, after all.

I also throw into my mini first aid kit a couple of gelcap doses of whatever multi-symptom cold and flu meds I happen to have in the bathroom cabinet, just in case I come down with something and can’t find an open pharmacy right away.

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This article was by Reid Bramblett and last updated in August 2011.
All information was accurate at the time.


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Copyright © 1998–2013 by Reid Bramblett. Author: Reid Bramblett.