Virtuoso Life - July/August 2008 - (Page 155) WELL TRAVELED Doctor Your Vacation Travel physicians are becoming more popular – here’s why you may need one. BY MELISSA GASKILL ILLUSTRATIONS BY MICHAEL LIVESAY-WRIGHT y ou’ve finally booked that well-deserved two weeks in the dominican Republic. The new swimwear and the evening clothes are packed. you’ve brushed up on your backhand and your backstroke, hired a pet sitter, held the mail. Health concerns such as tetanus and malaria are probably the furthest things from your mind. yet travel to foreign destinations can expose you to all sorts of unpleasantness, according to lin Chen, a travel medicine specialist at Mount auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts. food- and waterborne hepatitis a can crop up in developing countries, she says, even where you least expect it. a barefoot encounter with a sharp shell on a beach introduces the risk of tetanus, and that little mosquito bite could cause malaria or dengue fever. a travel physician, though, can provide assessment, advice, and resources to reduce the health risks associated with travel. While it’s not a board-certified medical specialty in the u.S., travel medicine is practiced by Get targeted health tips before you travel. J U LY | A U G U S T 2 0 0 8 155
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