rama@ut-ngp.UUCP (rama) (11/28/85)
This is a brief note on some health precautions travellers to India and Nepal might want to take. I believe that the Govt. of India does not require any innoculation shots of travellers visiting India, but recommend that visitors take cholera shots if they have not done so in the last 2 years. The cholera preventive vaccine is not very expensive, (approx $6 at ut-austin); however the shot is supposed to have only 60% to 70% protection capability. The health centre preventive care unit here recommends that travellers might want to drink soft drinks or boiled water, particularly while travelling outside towns where municipal treatment of public water facilities may not be sufficient. (Use your own judgement/discretion) Hot drinks like tea/coffee where the water is boiled is supposed to be fine. Apart from the treatment that municipal water has gone through, local flora(bacteria) differ across towns and nations, and it usually takes a couple of days for most people to get used to a new water source. ----------------------------------------------------------- VISITORS TO NEW DELHI AND NEPAL : PLEASE READ CAREFULLY ----------------------------------------------------------- The health centre here recommends that people planning to visit New Delhi and/or Nepal might want to seriously consider taking MENINGITIS vaccination. Apparently, while the indigenous population in these areas are not being affected by it, travellers to these areas have been noticably affected by meningitis; the nurse here reports that a couple of deaths have occured in the last two years. The Meningitis vaccine has a high protection rate and is supposed to be above 95% effective. The catch? It is quite expensive. Each vial costs about $ 50.00(fifty dollars). Upto ten shots can be given from one vial, i.e., upto ten people can be vaccinated with one vial. There are two problems wit this however : a) The vial must be used up within a week of its opening. b) Getting ten people together to take the shot within a week requires considerably more coordination than one would expect. While health centres try and coordinate this affair, it is often not poss. and so per person costs vary considerably, ranging from a low $5 to a high $50, and usually fall in the higher end of the range. At the University of Texas at Austin, the health centre is willing to give this innoculation to anyone, irrespective of their affiliation to U.T. (almost all their services are for U.T. students only). So if anyone is planning to travel to these places in the coming vacations, this information might be of help to you. Contact Valerie Cox of the Student Health Centre at (512)-471-1824 for further details. They have to order the vials from elsewhere, and so some advance notice would be a good idea. The health centre also pointed out that malaria prophylaxis is recommended. The easy way involves taking n+7 tablets of Chloroquin (500 m.g.) one tablet a week; n in this case is the number of weeks that you will stay in India. (The idea is to start a week before, take one tablet a week for every week that you stay and then take one tablet a week for 6 weeks after returning. This is to be contrasted to two to four 500 m.g. tablets A DAY for N+6 weeks where N is the number of weeks that one has the illness) The more complicated, rather more comprehensive way is to get a blood test done before you take the first Cloroquin pill. Sometimes Chloroquin is not adequate in treating someone who gets malaria, and the only other (and stronger medicine) is Primaquin. The problem with Primaquin is that it reacts very strongly with people who suffer from deficiency of some sort (I think platelets/ but I am not sure) in their red blood cells(I am HAZY about this part and all I realy know is that a blood test will tell you -- and the doctor will tell you which blood test is appropriate when you let her/him know what it is for) So coming back to the point, a blood test is necessary before you take the first Chloroquin ( the test can not be conclusive after you've taken Chloroquin). Certain races and citizens of certain nations traditionally tend to have a higher proportion of citizens who suffer from whatever the deficiency is and thus can't take Primaquin. Indians are supposed to fall into this category. All the medications/ vaccines above require either a doctor's prescriptions or a nurse's recommendation, and travellers should keep that in mind. That is all in this note, which after all turned out to be not-so- brief. Ramamohan
das@orstcs.UUCP (das) (12/08/85)
Do these restrictions also apply to Pakistan and Bangladesh ? Also this article should be cross-posted to net.med if not done yet. ----- (just my opinion) das@orstcs