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Travelling Photographers: Staying Healthy
June 5th, 2008
If there’s one thing that makes it tough, if not impossible, to create great photographs while on location, it’s being waylaid with sickness. So if you’re traveling to an exotic location, the more precautions you take the better your chances of staying upright. Here’s what I do. I’m not a doctor, so take this as a list of ideas and nothing more.
1. One month before I travel i visit my travel medical clinic for a consult with the experts. I’m about as immunized as I can be right now, but they make sure I’m on the right anti-malarials and they give me a prescription for DUKORAL which is an oral cholera vaccine that is also effective against traveler’s diarrhea.
2. I take acidophilus pearls daily while I am on the road, starting a week before I go. This balances the natural/good biotics in your gut and gives you a fighting chance against the badies. Or so I’m told.
3. I take Emergen’C’ daily. It’s a powdered vitamin mix and I figure anything I can do to keep my immunity up through planes, trains, and hotels, is a good move. Plus it makes the bottled water taste better.
4. I hydrate. I don’t like drinking water, so it’s a conscious effort, but I drink 3 litres a day. I buy a case and keep it in my hotel room and I’ve always got some. I brush my teeth with it too.
5. I eat smart. I’m taking more and more risks, but I still tend to eat vegetarian when I can on the road, and I avoid fruit drinks, ice-cubes, raw salads, and pretty much anything that scares me. I’m not Anthony Bourdain, my job is to shoot not eat everything the locals call a delicacy. And I carry meal bars and snacks for those times when the available local food is too dodgy or I’m just not in the mood to brave it.
6. I carry charcoal tablets in case I get shloshy-gut. I also carry immodium but use it only in an emergency – like getting on a plane in a couple hours. It’s better to let your body get rid of what’s going on down there and immodium plugs you up good. On the off-chance I have to use the stuff I also have some laxative to ease me back into things. While I’m at it – Gravol (the natural stuff, not the pink stuff that knocks me out all day), Tylenol, Advil, also get thrown into a bottle. And for the REALLY scary stuff, I carry a course of ciproflaxin, which I don’t take unless I’ve run out of options.
7. I carry twice as much medication, all accompanied with the perscriptions, as I anticipate needing, and I split it and pack it in two separate bags.
8. I carry a decent first-aid kit. Actually I have two. A larger one in my big duffle, and a tiny one that fits in my camera bag with just basics like band-aids, a couple tylenol, some gauze. REI has this kind of thing pre-made for trekkers and travelers.
9. On more remote trips and trips to high HIV areas I carry a sterile sharps kit – 5 – 3cc syringes, 10 needles, 1 suture line, 1 IV drip needle, alcohol swabs, polytopic ointment and 4 gauze dressings. A signed prescription note and certificate of authorization accompany the kit.
10. Lastly, I carry good travel health insurance, mine comes through the Canadian equivalent of AAA. And I carry MedJet Assist – a comprehensive, no-small-print, evacuation insurance in case I am hospitalized which can happen as eaily due to a car accident as it can from eating dodgy moo-goo gai pan.
If all this seems overkill to you remember it’s created by someone who is a Type 1 Diabetic, and travels to some relatively remote places. If your idea of exotic travel is a 5-Star hotel in Vienna, you can safely ignore much of this. But if you’ve got two weeks in Lubumbashi, DRC, then this should be considered a minimum effort. Travel safe, travel healthy.
Mmmm….. streeeeeettfoooooooodddd.
I travel with this guy and yes, he packs all this. He puts in all in his big gray Storm Case and counts it as one of his two checked bag! But it is ok, ’cause we get the students to carry it.
By the way, brushing your teeth with local water is very unlikely to get you sick. For one thing you dont swallow and what little is left in your mouth is an unlikely volume to give you whatever bug in floating in the pipes. I travel to some pretty yucky places and never get giardia. Most of the time what people get is E coli and this is gotten off food and plates handled by people with poor hygiene. In other words, your eating poop. There is a very informative pdf article posted by the International society of Travel Medicine: http://www.istm.org/educational_resources/cases/Case2006-2.pdf. This article is well documented and written for the layman. Well worth the read if you are a traveler to high risk areas like many of us.
Har har. Yes, it’s true, you seldom get sick from brushing teeth, but it’s a habit I got into. Your comment does bring up a point that’s more important – hand-washing, especially with all the hand-shaking and eating with hands, etc.
I think it’s also worth mentioning a “trick” I learned a long time ago. As a kid, actually.
It’s good to eat a little dirt now and then. Literally. There are all kinds of little gremlins in dirt, and eating it will help build up your immune system. Sure, you’ll get sick for a bit, but it’ll be in a nice safe environment before you leave on that trip to Papua New Guinea where all the evil microbes hang out.
No seriously. There are evern some pediatricians who recommend letting toddlers play in different dirt locations, because it’s a natural process and helps the boby build its immune system.
Anyway… I’m not suggesting you go out and make a nice dirt hamburger.. but if that piece of toast falls on the ground, it’s not going to kill you if you eat it, and it might in actually help you out.
I’ve heard several people now tell me that eating local yogurt is a good idea. Same principle – gives you a dose of the local good stuff that’s used to fighting off the local bad stuff. Or something like that. Besides – yoghurt!!
Leave it to you to tell my readers to eat dirt – you won’t even eat olives!
You might also want to price out Air Ambulance Card http://www.airambulancecard.com. They’re one of my clients. Like Medjet, they transport you home to the US or Canadian hospital of your choice if you are injured 150 miles or more from home. Their yearly membership is considerably less expensive than the other guys’.
Wow! I’m scared to leave the house now. Ha ha. Always better to be safe (and healthy) than sorry.
Yeah, sorry Damien!
The point is to be prepared so you don’t have to be scared. Some people can travel without ever having a problem. But once you’ve had typhoid, malaria, parasites, and a few nasty nights too close to a toilet bowl, you start over-thinking the whole thing. 
>> … But once you’ve had typhoid, malaria, parasites, and a few nasty nights
>> too close to a toilet bowl,….
See, that’s why I like to travel with you. That reminds me of point #11 which you fogot to include. Travel with a buddy who tends to attract more bugs then you. If a swarm of mosquitoes see you, they have to ask themselves who looks like the tastier treat. You want your buddy to be as bug-attractive as possible.
Works for me!
I live to serve, my friend. Happy to help. You carry my bags and I take the bugs and nasties. Sounds like you’re getting the better deal…
Great article David, and even better commentary! LMAO! Being trapped in a hotel near the loo does definitely cramp ones shooting style, but last time it happened to me (Rwanda) I pulled out my 70-200mm with 1.4TC and shot from the balcony. Made for some interesting shots from an atypical angle….made an unpleasant situation slightly bearable.
I bit about Dukoral….I have good friends who are MSF doctors and they have told me it doesn’t work very well in regions other than Central America…primarily Mexico. They don’t recommend using it in S and SE Asia as it offers no real protection in those regions.
David taught me everything I know about international travel. Of course, I came home from a trip last year with malaria…
Did I say that out loud?!