Journal of travel medicine
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Psychological health problems are highlighted among the most relevant disease patterns in expatriates. The purpose of this study was to determine the psychological well-being in Portuguese expatriates in Angola and Mozambique, considering the increasing expatriation wave. ⋯ Increasing awareness and monitoring expatriates mental health should be in the health agenda, furthermore considering them a risk group in need of evidence-based mental health expatriate preparedness. The use of user-friendly validated tools, such as GHQ-12, allowing objective assessment and surveillance of these hard to reach populations should be reinforced.
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Research conducted on young Israeli travellers has pointed to high substance usage rates. For some drug-using backpackers, actual extraction and rescue from their trip abroad is necessary. This study represents a first attempt to explore the influence of geographic region in which rescue occurs, cause for rescue and gender and age differences among Israeli rescuees. ⋯ Region, age and gender of young travellers should be taken into consideration when thinking about induced acute psychosis caused by substance use. Policymakers need to consider prevention and harm reduction interventions relevant to this risk group.
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International travel, particularly to developing countries, is becoming increasingly common among the Israeli population, including an increase in the number of travelling children. Since children are a distinct travellers' population, data about their post-travel morbidity are needed. ⋯ The main conditions seen in paediatric returning travellers were GI, febrile and dermatologic illnesses, some may be rare in their country of origin. Targeting care for the suspected pathogens based on updated knowledge of epidemiology and thorough travel history is essential.
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Our knowledge of the health problems and infections encountered by international travellers has evolved considerably in the past decades. The growth of global networks such as the GeoSentinel Surveillance network, TropNet Europe, EuroTravNet and networks based in North America have provided valuable information on the frequency of a wide array of travel-related diseases and accidents, including details on the destination of travel and trends over time. ⋯ However, network data due to a lack of denominators usually cannot serve as a basis for a GRADE approach to guideline development. Although epidemiological network studies will continue to serve an important role in travel medicine we encourage an additional strong focus towards translational scientific research questions and towards the broader use of novel techniques to obtain more accurate epidemiological analyses to address the many unanswered questions in our field.
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The purpose of this study was to examine the principal travel health priorities of travellers. The most frequently selected travel health concerns were accessing medical care abroad, dying abroad, insect bites, malaria, personal safety and travel security threats. The travel health risks of least concern were culture shock, fear of flying, jet lag and sexually transmitted infections. This study is the first to develop a hierarchy of self-declared travel health risk priorities among travellers.