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- [Man] Family travel can be exciting,
fun and very stressful.
Dr. Stephen Park suggests that some careful planning
can help to alleviate stress when families prepare
for possible health risks related to travel.
- We do pay a lot of attention to the things
that we need to do in packing toys and packing clothes,
and things like that and sometimes we don't pay
as much attention as we need to in preparing for
potential or anticipated health issues.
If a family's planning to travel internationally,
I would first recommend that they speak with their
regular physician, who can help them in making decisions
about how best to be prepared for that travel.
One of the first things I think we can do is, as parents,
and we advise parents to do, is to take along essentials.
You may develop actually a travel health kit
that not only can you use with travel, but to have around
the home as well, or more local travel.
I often recommend that parents take not only medications
that their children are taking regularly, which of course
we don't want them to forget, but also to take some things
that may be useful if there's an acute medical condition,
or an exacerbation of a chronic issue.
It's worthwhile since we do run into acute illnesses,
especially in younger children so frequently that you're
prepared with antipyretics meaning medicines that
decrease fever or treat pain such as acetaminophen
or ibuprofen, certainly.
Often children may have issues of congestion or rashes
or hives in response to something and so I like to recommend
that people travel with an antihistamine,
such as diphenhydramine or Benadryl as a trade name.
I think it's worthwhile as well, if children have cuts
or minor injuries that we have not only band aids available,
but also to travel with some topical antibiotic ointments
to prevent any infection of those injuries.
Oftentimes we run into trouble,
especially with international travel,
with what we call traveler's diarrhea.
An important point to make for children that are traveling,
for parents that are caring for them,
is that we really don't recommend using anti-diarrheal
medicines, in certain cases where children are traveling
to areas where they may have more serious
bacterial infections that cause diarrhea,
it may be worthwhile to have antibiotics for travel
or to understand how to get help,
if those diarrheal illnesses come.
When you're packing your travel health kit, it's also really
important to think about where are we going?
What might we encounter in this environment?
If you're going off to sunny beaches, we wanna really
make sure that you're packing appropriate sunscreen
for your children.
If you're going off on treks through the jungle,
or to areas where mosquitoes may be in season,
some of those mosquitoes can carry very dangerous diseases,
but in general we do recommend that you bring insect
repellents or even insect netting for certain environments.
Air travel can be difficult for certain children,
especially young children, in that we experience
big changes in barometric pressure, the pressure between
the inside of the plane and the outside and that creates
differences in pressures especially as we encounter
them in our ears.
And so it can be very difficult and painful at times
for young children in particular, to equalize that
pressure between the outside and the inside of their ear.
What we often recommend for children that experience
motion sickness are antihistamines if we need medications.
There are some medications that are used in adults,
certain patches, that may be appropriate for adolescents,
not so much for young kids.
There may be some illnesses or some situations where
a family may need to reconsider their travel plans.
That's a hard decision to make as a family.
But, if a child is acutely ill, where they have a very
high fever, they're not responding appropriately,
they're not drinking fluids or able to keep fluids down
such that they may become dehydrated, or they're in
significant pain from a very bad ear infection
or an injury or something like that,
that may limit their mobility, then I think we need
to consider what's best for the child.
Traveling with children can be some of the most fun
a family can have and growing as a family and spending
that time together and seeing the world around us.
I think if we as parents and physicians that are helping
parents, help families to be prepared with a first aid kit,
with a traveling health needs addressed in advance,
and being able to know a plan in case you did need to seek
healthcare services while you are away, that can take
the pressure off of that part of the equation
and allow a family to just have a great time.
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