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Travel health
Issues with health care, hospitals, and health insurance while traveling in Europe
Yes, you can drink the water (except on trains).
No, you probably won't catch anything more exotic than a head cold or a case of the tourist runs.
The pharmacies in Europe are astoundingly helpful (they can often hand out what it takes a prescription to get Stateside), and the hospitals are marvels of socialized medicine, where for minor complaints or ailments you can often get taken care of lickety-split with no time spent in the waiting room, no forms to fill out, and no insurance co-pay.
That's the upshot. This section will fill you in on all the details for keeping healthy whilst on the road. In the meantime, here are some...
Useful travel health links
Medic Alert (www.medicalert.org) - Discuss any chronic condition with your doctor before leaving. If you have epilepsy, diabetes, or a heart condition and don't already have a Medic Alert Identification tag or bracelet—recognized by docs the world over and giving them instant, 24-hour access to your personal health records—do yourself a favor and get one. Membership costs $35 the first year, and $20 annually after that. They also offer a $100 travel insurance policy you might want to look into.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (www.cdc.gov) - Our government's CDC will caution you about health threats and which vaccines to stick yourself with (for Europe, none you don't routinely get in childhood are required, and very few others are even remotely recommended).
World Health Organization (www.who.int) - The United Nations' WHO does an excellent job of pouncing on any health threat to the public, no matter how minor, and smothering it with travel warnings and provisos. Overly-cautious alerts notwithstanding—reading just CDC reports, you'd think breathing the air in Iowa was the world's leading cause of death—this remains the single best repository of the official word on all health related issues around the world.
IAMAT (www.iamat.org) - The International Association for Medical Assistance to Travelers is chock full of advice on travel health, and serves as a sort of free health insurance. You can become a member at no charge (they do appreciate donations), and you get a directory of doctors around the world who will be happy to treat you (the docs may charge you, they may not; still, the free list of English-speaking doctors is a boon).
International Society for Travel Medicine (www.istm.org) - This is actually an industry organization, one to which doctors who specialize in travel medicine can belong, but it also has some nifty recourses for the public, including a list of travel health clinics.
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This material was last updated August 2007. All information was accurate at the time.
Copyright © 1998-2008 by Reid Bramblett. All rights reserved.
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