Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - How's the Beef?

Hi Gail,

To supplement the website that Laverendrye supplied, you may want to read what the Centers for Disease Cotrol and Prevention in Atlanta have to say about Mad Cow Disease:

http://www.cdc.gov/travel/diseases/madcow.htm

I think common risks to health and safety, while they're quite low by world standards, are more significant in Alberta than Mad Cow Disease is. I'm thinking of risks like automobile accidents and overexposure to ultraviolet radiation.

Another risk that, although it's very small, is still worth mentioning is the risk of contracting "Beaver Fever" (Giardia lamblia) from drinking unboiled / untreated water in Alberta streams. Municipal tap water (including that in Banff, Lake Louise and Jasper) is safe to drink.

Bear attacks are rare, but bear safety is a topic that is worth knowing about. Here are some websites on that:

http://www.pc.gc.ca/pn-np/ab/banff/visit/visit12_e.asp

http://www.cmiae.org/hike-bear.htm

http://wlapwww.gov.bc.ca/eeeb/info/bearaware/home/

It probably goes without saying, but perhaps it does no harm to state it anyway, that a traveller from outside of Canada needs to have a medical insurance policy that will cover the cost of emergency medical treatment in this country in the event that the traveller needs it.

A young friend from the United Kingdom spent a week with us during the Calgary Stampede in early July this year. He arrived here with what he thought was a sprained finger from a water skiing accident that he'd had in British Columbia about a week before he reached us. He was inclined to ignore his bruised finger, but we eventually persuaded him to get it checked out at the walk in medical clinic in our neighbourhood. It turned out that his finger was broken, the broken chip of bone had rotated the wrong way round, and he needed surgery in which the bone was rotated the right way round and pins were inserted to hold the bone in place while it healed. Luckily the orthopedic surgeon was able to do the surgery on an outpatient basis in our local hospital. All the same, our young friend was in considerable pain for a few days following the surgery. My husband and I felt so responsible to the young man's parents, who are friends of ours -- although our guilt really wasn't logical, as there was no way any of this was our fault. The orthopedic surgeon told our young friend that, if he had left his injury untreated for another couple of weeks, he might have had to have his finger amputated, as the rotated bone was pinching on a vital nerve. The young fellow is back in the United Kingdom now, and we hear that he has to have between 6 and 9 months of physiotherapy to restore the full functioning of his finger!

Sorry for the long shaggy dog story. I mention it just to illustrate my belief that more pedestrian dangers are more likely to incapacitate one than Mad Cow Disease, although of course Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease is a very dangerous disease if one does actually contract it.

ALSO, A NOTE TO BUDGET TRAVELLERS : Although our young friend had excellent medical insurance, he had to pay for the surgery upfront and then reclaim the costs from his insurance provider. He didn't have enough money on him to cover the cost of the surgery, and his line of credit on his credit card wasn't large enough either. So my husband paid for the surgery, and the patient's parents in the United Kingdom now are in the process of purchasing a bank draft in Canadian funds and mailing it to my husband to reimburse him.