TravelPharm: Travel Pharmacy interview on mosquito nets, DEET, Malaria & travel immunisations
TravelPharm, a specialist online travel pharmacy, talks to Career Break 360 about DEET, mosquito nets, travel immunisations and how can malaria be prevented.
We do online consultations for malaria, travellers diarrhoea, altitude sickness etc, moving onto things like first aid kits, sterile medical kits and that type of thing.
One of the first things I advise to do when people are thinking of malaria and the trip that they’re going on , is to find out from a reputable source, be that NHS or a site like ourselves, what they actually need for that area. there are certain drugs that you would use in certain countries that you wouldn’t use in others.
Second thing to do is to find out once you’ve decided on that medication, how long to take it for before you go, how long you need to take it for while you’re there and probably the most important thing that people slip up on is how long they need to take it once they return from their trip.
The third thing to remember is that these things aren't 100% effective, so no prophylaxis that you can take is going to be 100%effective, so there are other measures you need to take whilst you're in areas that are high risk from malaria. Most of them are quite sensible, but some of the things you may not think about or realise yourself.
MOSQUITO NET
The first one would be to use a mosquito net. A lot of the places you go to may provide them, but you need to make sure that that's the case otherwise you’re going to have to get one that you can use and take with you from the UK or where your travelling from.
MOSQUITO REPELLANT - DEET
The second thing will be to use a good repellant. The most common one that people use and one of the most effective ones is something that contains DEET. You see 100% DEET, there's no need to go to 100%. 50 - 55% is the most that you’ll ever need and 100% doesn’t give you any more cover at all.
HANDY TIPS
Then they're a couple of other common sense things. things that people maybe quite realise. One would be dark clothing, particularly at night time when the mosquitoes really come out, and the other one would be things like perfume. Don’t wear too much perfume, try to avoid wearing perfume if you can because that can attract the mosquitoes as well.
We do online consultations for malaria, travellers diarrhoea, altitude sickness etc, moving onto things like first aid kits, sterile medical kits and that type of thing.
One of the first things I advise to do when people are thinking of malaria and the trip that they’re going on , is to find out from a reputable source, be that NHS or a site like ourselves, what they actually need for that area. there are certain drugs that you would use in certain countries that you wouldn’t use in others.
Second thing to do is to find out once you’ve decided on that medication, how long to take it for before you go, how long you need to take it for while you’re there and probably the most important thing that people slip up on is how long they need to take it once they return from their trip.
The third thing to remember is that these things aren't 100% effective, so no prophylaxis that you can take is going to be 100%effective, so there are other measures you need to take whilst you're in areas that are high risk from malaria. Most of them are quite sensible, but some of the things you may not think about or realise yourself.
MOSQUITO NET
The first one would be to use a mosquito net. A lot of the places you go to may provide them, but you need to make sure that that's the case otherwise you’re going to have to get one that you can use and take with you from the UK or where your travelling from.
MOSQUITO REPELLANT - DEET
The second thing will be to use a good repellant. The most common one that people use and one of the most effective ones is something that contains DEET. You see 100% DEET, there's no need to go to 100%. 50 - 55% is the most that you’ll ever need and 100% doesn’t give you any more cover at all.
HANDY TIPS
Then they're a couple of other common sense things. things that people maybe quite realise. One would be dark clothing, particularly at night time when the mosquitoes really come out, and the other one would be things like perfume. Don’t wear too much perfume, try to avoid wearing perfume if you can because that can attract the mosquitoes as well.
Category
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Travel