helen63

I am not sure why, but every time we are about to go one or another country, something happens in that specific country. Our friends joke about it, and ask where we plan to go, so they do not plan to go there ...

There was a huge earthquake in Peru, right before our trip, and we had to change our route, because their main highway was destroyed. There was a tsunami in Thailand, right before our vacation, and we had to change our plans to only go to Central/North, but not to Phuket. There were terrorists acts in Turkey like a day before our trip. There was a conflict between Israel/Turkey on the day we were in Israel, and actually we went to Bethlehem, and could not get back to Israel for a while. And there was more ...
And going to Vietnam, we were worried a lot about Denge, and worried about malaria going to Africa, mad cow going to England, etc

If we cancelled all these trips, we would never gone anywhere...


So, from my perspective, it would be nice to know a bit more about the virus, and evaluate personal risk..
We are not crazy, we will cancel if this makes sense, but I am not sure we need to cancel because of panic or worries.

Is Zika worse than Denge (for non pregnant women)? However, we go to countries with Denge all the time.

My husband is a magnet for mosquitoes as well....

yestravel

As I mentioned upstream, I am in SA now. We left before Zika really hit the news, but there was some info on it. I never once considered cancelling our trip. We took plenty of deet and I sprayed some pants for protection. As it has turned out, it's been exceptionally dry where we have been and hardly any mosquitos.

From what I have been reading symptoms are generally mild with the risk being for pregnant women or women planning to get pregnant. There are some cases with Guilin barre which is serious, but I don't believe that link has been definitely established, My understanding is that dengue is way worse. So unless you are pregnant or plan to get pg, go and enjoy yourself.

Of course you should talk to a doctor. Do you have a travel clinic you can go to? I think they might have the most up to date info.

helen63

Thanks, Yestravel for posting!

For now, we are planning to go with a lot of repellent.

Unfortunately, those travel clinics I went to were not very helpful in the past. People who work there never been outside of US, and really do not have more info than on CDC.Gov.

And they always add more panic about all these terrible diseases that exist in developing countries . Perhaps, some travel clinics are better than others, but this was my experience

SambaChula

That's been my experience with travel clinics too, even in a city known as the medical capitol of the world. On my first trip to Brazil, I was being advised to take medication when it was really not needed (specifically, malaria meds for an area of Brazil that did not have outbreaks, meds that made me very sick) because they were reading CDC advice for huge, varied Brazil as one homogeneous whole.

Dengue usually comes with symptoms that resemble a severe case of flu, aches and such. Zika apparently often has no symptoms.

yestravel

To bad, we have some good, helpful clinics in DC. It's important to find a clinic that is busy with lots of worldwide travelers. The CDC info has charts and maps that delineate where there are issues in each country for each disease. It does not look at say Brazil as one homogenized country. It's easy to check for yourself and mark on their maps where you plan to travel. Sometimes you can be in a gray area and then have to make a decision whether to take a med or not.

I think the issue with Zika is the researchers are still figuring it out and not a lot of proven info is yet available.

SambaChula

Here's an interesting article, about a country whose outbreak didn't get a lot of publicity, and what has happened subsequently:
http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsand...ntent=20160209

SambaChula

In fact, yes travel, the CDC's own site says about its own malaria maps "This risk estimate is based largely on cases occurring in US military personnel who travel for extended periods of time with unique itineraries that likely do not reflect the risk for the average US traveler." How accurate is that info then that US doctors unfamiliar with Brazil are parroting?

helen63

I read this article about Zika outbreak in French Polynesia as well in the morning, and was hoping there will be the end of this virus in Brazil soon

thursdaysd

SambaChula is misreading the CDC information. The risk estimate imformation he quotes is a footnote. It is NOT applicable to Brazil. It is not applicable to a lot of places....

SambaChula

The footnotes are usually where the technical information is further explained, and there was at the time of reading, no mention of where the info is not applicable. In fact, it makes sense that since the explosion of cases is relatively new, the statistics were collected in the manner mentioned.
Current info (as of this posting) on the CDC site is much more extensive, and applicable to current conditions and knowledge.

SambaChula

For those intending to go to the Olympics in Rio, the CDC says "The presence of mosquitoes may change seasonally, with increasing temperatures or rainfall, and may change over time." Travelers should understand that Rio is moving into its winter season, with less rain and lower temperatures, less conducive to the breeding of mosquitos.