By the way . . . put your faith in REAL medicine...

WE ARE right in the middle of holiday season, with people jetting off to all sorts of exotic places. The further afield you go, the more likely you are going to need travel health advice specific to your trip. For many, it’s an added hassle and expense that they simply opt out of. Others, generally the wellorganised, elect to vaccinate well in advance of their trip, avoiding the last-minute rush.

Then there are those who I call the ‘inbetweeners’. They either hate needles or shun the cost of the shots, but still end up getting cover because they are terrified of getting sick! Mosquitoes, food and water are the arch enemies when it comes to farflung travel. And short of not eating and surgically attaching yourself to a mosquito net, you have nowhere to hide. No matter how well prepared you are, you could still catch something. There is no way of protecting yourself 100%, but inoculations and antimalarials are a good place to start.

Patients are now also asking for ‘alternatives’ to vaccination. Two hundred million people worldwide use homeopathy as part of their mainstream medical treatment.

Over the past few weeks, I have faced the challenge of several people deciding to opt for homeopathy over conventional medicine when it comes to their travel health. They see my vaccines and anti-malarial tablets as evil concoctions created by large pharmaceutical companies. They cite the 104 homeopathic clinical trials documented as showing credible evidence homeopathy works. Homeopathy was conceived in 1790, so it’s taken 227 years to produce 104 research papers. Positive outcomes were only shown in under half of all cases. The main power of homeopathy is its placebo effect. In spite of all of this, and a body of evidence to suggest homeopathy is scientifically implausible, several patients have opted out of my conventional offerings.

To keep the mozzies away I give my spiel on the mosquito repellent DEET, again falling on deaf ears as they tell me that’s toxic. So they leave with nothing, but mark my words, one day they will be back, wishing they had put more faith in real medicine than their homeopathic mumbo jumbo.