General thread for diseases, vaccinations, or cures you might get while travelling. I want to go to interesting places but i don't want to get>malaria>tuberculosis>hep aOr otherDiscuss also preventitive measures for disease.
Seriously considering getting PREP.I don't have the balls for rawdogging ladyboys yet.
Does anyone do anything special for water filtration? I got one of those straw things at REI do you think thats good enough?
I got herpes in Ecuador 8/9 years ago and was well worth it.Don't shag anyone with a bright red spot on their groin area, don't get sucky sucky from someone with a cold sore (yes that's herpes, yes it can spread from mouth to genitals)but most of all DON'T REGRETS. I remember looking to out of my window to the sight of the beautiful Andes lit up at night, thinking I could end up with an STI here, and I just dived right back into the hippie morena girl I'd been wanting to fuck for a while.Pic rel was not the exact view of that moment but same city, Quito
>>2822856PrEP is a very good idea in general, but remember it won't protect you from other STDs. It also requires you to take it consistently to work (assuming you're getting it in pill form, injections are also a good option). If you're planning on getting to carnally know a lot of hookers / ladyboys, PrEP + condoms is the safest way to go at it.Also, I would strongly recommend getting the following vaccinations too:>HPV (duh)>Hepatitis A (can be transmitted sexually, especially through rimming)>Meningococcal B (gives good, but not complete, protection against gonorrhea)Godspeed anon. Send us pics of your favourite LBs
>>2823772No one cares trekkie
>>2822851>malariaAnti-malarials pre-exposure if in truly high risk area. Anti-malarials post-exposure if you manage to catch it in a low-risk one. Most of all, nets and mosquito spray.>tuberculosisYou got vaxxxed as a kid if you're from a civilized country. It's most likely not effective any more by now and adults don't get boosters because it does fuck all for them. So just cross your fingers and hope you never catch the drug resistant variant.>hep aTrivial. The vaccine last a lifetime. Pretty much mandatory for shitholes if you don't want to turn yellow.Get typhoid too while you're at it. The protection is short-lived but very much worth it for the third world and their hygiene standards. It's surprisingly common.Tetanus and diphteria are a thing and nobody thinks of these any more. You were vaxxed for these once, but get the booster, this shit can kill you. Whooping cough won't kill you if you're not wearing diapers (infant or adult) but it's very much no fun and it's part of the DTP vaccine anyway. Measles, chickenpox, polio, hep b, you got it already and it's lifetime stuff.Jap enceph is rare as fuck but potentially very lethal, up to personal choice.Yellow fever as needed, they won't let you in without the vax anyway.Rabies is a meme, you're gonna die anyway if you don't get PEP. Just don't get bitten and if you do, don't take any chances. No open windows without nets, bats bite lightly.
>>2822851I thought polio didn't exist anymore...
>>2826057>I thought polio didn't exist anymore...It’s been effectively eradicated almost everywhere thanks to good childhood vaccination regimes (the “wild” virus now survives only in Afghanistan and Pakistan, down from the 125 countries it could be found in as recently as the late 1980s), but like the bubonic plague, it hasn’t quite gone away completely. There’s a strain that mutated from versions of the now-discontinued live oral polio vaccine that still pops up in 20-odd countries with low overall vaccination rates. There are about 300 cases annually. But if you were vaccinated against polio as a child, whether with the obsolete syrup, or more likely, a shot, you are not at risk.>>2826041Pretty much agreed with all of these. The risk of Japanese encephalitis is practically nil for practically everyone going practically anywhere, but the disease itself is so awful in those rare worst-case scenarios (greater than 25% chance of fatality, 50%+ chance of severe brain damage, no cure or effective treatment if you get it) that I considered it worthwhile.Yellow fever risk is pretty low outside of Central Africa and some swampy bits of South America, but it’s another incurable one that could kill you, and as noted above, some places won’t let you in without being vaxed against it, so there’s little reason not to.And just ask anybody who’s had malaria how much it sucks to get malaria, and you’ll probably want to take prophylaxis seriously if you’re headed someplace where it’s a significant risk. Avoiding mosquito bites to the best of your ability is worth it even in areas with little or no malaria (nearly all of Thailand, for example), in case there’s dengue fever going around. Dengue won’t kill you, but it can easily ruin a trip. I was in Chiang Mai a few years ago when an outbreak occurred, and a friend who got it was bedridden and in agonizing pain for about ten days.
There's various herbal treatments for malaria and dengue of dubious quality, but one which is actually effective is Papaya leaf. Traditionally used as a tea, but now it's so popular in SE Asia you can buy powder or pill form. It's very cheap and it's quite good to take regularly while travelling, as it's also full of enzymes that help clear gut pathogens like E. Coli and Giardia.https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34834014/
Are there inoculation clinics where I can get all the shots done? I just tried to get an appointment at my usual doctor and its fucking 3 months wait. And I doubt the useless ass urgent care clinics will be any help.
>>2822851Japanese are so degenerate they have a disease named after them
>>2823772yeah i use the lifestraw with bottle included. has saved me spending on many a water bottle. i just fill bottle at night and leave in fridge and set aside straw until use.
>>2826349There are all sorts of more or less specialized “travel medicine” services out there—I’ve seen them offered at private urgent care clinics, municipal/regional public health authorities, and university hospitals, among other places.It’s also possible to find clinics on arrival in more than a few countries—I once got anti-malarial prophylactics from a clinic run by the Swedish government in Phnom Penh, for example. But for inoculations it’s often best to get them in advance, as some require multiple shots or may not be immediately effective.
>>2822851I lived in mozambique almost 20 years ago for half a year. I took anti malarials but some nights i leaned against the net and would receive almost 100 bites without noticing.I am a sickly as fuck adult and occasionally break down in random auto immune type flareups, sometimes i feel fine for years. I live in Canada and theres very little expertise or will to treat people for anything that isnt life threatening.Im worried because i believe in mozambique theres a strain of malaria that is subtle and chronic (i think its call plasmodium falciprum). Bringing it up to doctors here is not really an optionAnyone have experience travelling abroad for diagnosis of malaria?
>>2826581Youre a moron. That shit is going to kill you one day. It doesnt filter out anything but sediment
>>2826685I checked and my local grocery store pharmacy has all of them including travel vaccines lol. Still bullshit doctor wait times are up to months in America, so much for private healthcare.
>>2826189The efficacy of papaya leaf extracts is subject to ongoing debate (there’s solid biochemical evidence that it’s good for platelet counts and as an anti-inflammatory, but it may only really work in a noticeable way in concentrations much higher than you’d get from a retail supplement). But in any case, it’s important to know that it doesn’t have any proven preventative benefit against either malaria or dengue. If it helps, which there’s a solid chance it does, it’s as a treatment for patients who have already been infected. But reports of papaya leaf tea keeping people from getting malaria in the first place, which are numerous, are still all anecdotal, so papaya leaf should not be considered a safe substitute for more mainstream prophylaxis methods, which will vary by region and local resistance. If you want to use papaya leaf, go for it (it’s probably good for you, and certainly not bad for you unless you’ve got a compromised liver), but use it in addition to rather than instead of mefloquine or chloroquine or doxycycline or whichever one is recommended for your destination. And your best bet everywhere in the world is always going to be to try not to get bitten by mosquitoes.
>>2826695I was curious about that, but when I did some googling for my area, I was informed that our local branches of CVS (for non-Yanks, it’s a giant chain pharmacy, often found in supermarkets, many branches of which also offer vaccinations and various disease tests) don’t offer vaccines against yellow fever or Japanese encephalitis, but perhaps that’s regional. They’re offering them at a chain (private) urgent care company that’s all over my area, though, as well as at least three university hospitals not too far from me, not to mention a clinic attached to a city department of public health I’ve used before. Not cheap (the public health clinic now sells its yellow fever shots for close to $300, and it wasn’t much cheaper when I got it ten years ago), but very easily accessible.
