Explore the World, Carefully! Learn How to Stay Healthy While Travelling

Follow basic food and water precautions.

The food and beverage choices you make while travelling can impact your chance of getting sick. Contaminated food or beverages can cause traveller's diarrhoea and other diseases. Stay healthy abroad by making smart food and beverage choices. If you aren’t sure if a particular food or beverage is safe, the saying “boil it, cook it, peel it, or forget it” may help you decide whether it’s okay to consume.

Here are some suggested tips for choosing safe food and water while travelling:

• Only drink and use safe water, including for brushing your teeth
• Use water that is bottled and sealed (carbonated is safer) or disinfected (boiled, treated, or filtered)
• Use ice made with bottled or disinfected water
• Wash hands often with soap and water
• Treating clothes and shoes with mosquito repellent
• Only eat fruits and vegetables that have been washed in clean water and that you peeled yourself

Protect yourself against diseases carried by mosquitoes.

Mosquitoes can spread serious, sometimes fatal infectious diseases, many of which cannot be prevented with vaccines. Therefore, effective prevention of mosquito bites is necessary to lower the likelihood of catching one of these diseases.

Talk to a travel health specialist about how to avoid mosquito bites by the mosquitoes that transmit certain infectious diseases. Some options include:

• Sleeping in a room with window/door screens
• Using air conditioning
• Wearing long pants and long-sleeved shirts, socks, and shoes
• Treating clothes and shoes with mosquito repellent
• Using a mosquito net treated with mosquito repellent over the bed to protect against mosquitoes most active at night

Be sure to bring your own insect repellent on your trip. Your preferred product may not be available in other countries.

Pack a traveller's medical kit.

The contents of your medical kit will depend on your trip schedule, destination, length of stay, style of travel, and whether you will have access to medical facilities.

Things to consider as a starting point:

• Prescription medicines
• Over-the-counter medicines
• Basic first aid kit
• Oral rehydration solution packets
• Do not use mosquito repellent on bare skin
• Sunscreen
• Antibacterial hand wipes
• Lubricating eye drops

Animal bites.

Bites from monkeys, dogs, bats, rodents, and other animals frequently encountered during foreign travel could lead to a serious infection. In some cases, these animals’ saliva can be so heavily contaminated with pathogens (viruses, bacteria, and parasites) that you can get an infection if saliva gets into an existing cut or other body tissues.

Before you leave, you should have a current tetanus vaccination or proof of a booster vaccination in the past five to 10 years. A travel health specialist should assess if you need a pre-exposure rabies vaccination.

While travelling, never try to pet, handle, or feed unfamiliar domestic or wild animals, even in captive settings such as game ranches or petting zoos. Take particular care in areas where rabies is found. Also be sure to watch young children carefully, as they have a greater chance of being bitten and sustaining more severe injuries from animal bites.