Family Travel
January 2008
Healthy Family Travel
Any trip has its risks so is it only irresponsible parents who drag the children along? Of course not. Children bring a delightful new dimension to travel even if many of us set out with some trepidation. Significant problems and disasters are actually unusual, and the kids will you to all sorts of excellent people you wouldn’t otherwise have met. I am a fairly relaxed traveller but it wasn’t until our boys were seven and twelve that I plucked up the courage to venture with them into malarious Africa.
We flew off to Johannesburg in the school summer holidays, unconvinced that an overnight flight then stepping off into a completely new country was going to be wise. But BA did us proud. The personalised video-screens were declared ‘awesome’, in-flight films suited all our tastes and kept the boys absorbed until they fell into rapturous sleep. We’d read the relevant guides and decided to take the soft option – thus avoiding risky downtown Jo’berg – and hired a car to take us to the first resort on the edge of the Drakensberg Mountains. The boys were already well dosed with long-acting travel sickness remedies in the form of Stugeron and so they enjoyed or napped thorough a leisurely half day drive into wild Africa. We didn’t need to use the sick bags I’d snaffled from the aeroplane; they became a useful receptacle for Seb’s collection of glistening rose quartz.
The Risks
The loudest and clearest message that came home to me on this three week trip was how important it is to do some homework well before setting out. Southern Africa was an easy place to travel. There are lots of choices of things to buy, both in the way of souvenirs and food and clothes and yet although the supermarkets are well-stocked, there are health and particularly security issues. As parents who’d travelled extensively in Asia, the security precautions we needed to take were new to us and precautions different. Because of the risk of road accidents in regions where vehicle and road maintenance is poor, we have always avoided driving at night. This precaution is even more important in Africa because armed robbery is also a big risk if you venture out after dark.
A recent sobering report highlighted another night-time hazard: rabies. It is hugely important for all travellers to be aware of the risk of rabies (and also tetanus) after any bite or scratch by any mammal. Most cases come from dog-bites but a death in Amsterdam in December 2007 was especially distressing. The 34-year-old woman who died was admitted to hospital in Amsterdam 26 days after a brush with a bat in Kenya. There was no bite but the woman sustained two scratches on the side of her nose which bled. No special care was given to the woman following the incident with the bat. Local advice was that there was no rabies in bats in Kenya: there had never been a death from rabies recorded in Kenya that was blamed on a bat. Dutch doctors gave all possible treatments were given to the woman but she died 23 days after first becoming ill.
The Pleasures
Our family’s first destination in Southern Africa allowed all four of us to walk out amongst the astonishing variety of antelope and other beautiful but relatively harmless species. We went on to the Kruger and lots of vehicle safaris and some amazingly close views of ‘the big five’ – the species that deserve respect since if a hunter wounded rather than killed their quarry, the hunter often became the hunted. The children enjoyed the wildlife tourism but a few days of this was enough for them and we travelled on into Mozambique and chilled out in a resort overlooking a lagoon where the boys could snorkel after portly puffer fish. We were taken by boat across the lagoon to laze on an untouched beach extending as far as the eye could see in both directions – a lovely situation for a beach barbecue, and for watching whales off-shore and flamingos in-shore. The only other people we saw that day were local fishermen.
The whole trip was a better than we could have imagined but we’d planned it carefully, by taking advice from guidebooks and people who’d travelled in the same region, and we factored in lots of extra time for the boys to do what they enjoyed. They didn’t want to spend every waking hour gazing at giraffe, elephant, bok, and rhino but enjoyed ball games in the chalet gardens, splashing in pools and lagoons, building sand-castles and games of chase. Family holidays work well when the trip isn’t too goal-orientated and there’s plenty of slack time in the schedule.
Tips
We’d ventured into malarious Africa so took bite avoidance precautions seriously, putting on long clothes and repellent before dusk. I’d sprayed the boys’ evening outfits with permethrin ‘Bug Proof’ treatment. We all took mefloquine (Lariam) antimalarial tablets weekly and none of us experienced any side effects.
Malaria is a disease that scares me and I have been reluctant to venture into malarious Africa until my children were old enough to understand the importance of bite avoidance; they could also be bribed to comply with bite prevention precautions.
The boys are now old enough to complain if they feel ill. Very young children cannot communicate which is why, in babies and toddlers, it is easy to overlook dangerous symptoms.
Sketch books and a ball were useful entertainments during ‘slack’ times.
We travelled with 3 sets of binoculars so that there weren’t any squabbles over who could look first.
When travelling with very small children who need to take an antimalarial preparation, parents often crush tablets, however chopping them results in a less bitter taste and is recommended for children (as long as they don't spit out the bits). It is okay to mix the tablets with jam, chocolate spread or hide them in a sandwich.
Dr Jane Wilson-Howarth now works as a general practitioner in East Anglia and also teaches on all aspects of travel health. ‘Your Child Abroad’ co-author Dr Matthew Ellis was awarded his PhD for research in Nepal into perinatal problems and has recently been appointed a Consultant Paediatrician and Senior Lecturer in Child Health in Bristol.