Overseas drugs often counterfeit, receive the proper travel immunization in Manhattan

During the Partnership for Safe Medicines’ Interchange Conference in 2010, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg read an alarming statistic that “in certain parts of the world, somewhere between 30 and 50 percent of drugs to treat serious diseases are actually counterfeit.” Hamburg then emphasizes that due to limited surveillance she feels uncertain whether these shocking numbers even truly represent “the magnitude and scope of the problem,” which she believes “is growing every day.”

While Hamburg’s team claims to be making strides in protecting US citizens from imported tampered with medicines, her organizations cannot respectfully guard Americans who travel out of the FDA’s range of influence. This is certainly true for people who do not receive the proper travel immunization medications before venturing into developing countries that lack adequate regulation of transported drugs.

People especially traveling to sub-Saharan Africa put themselves at a high risk of contracting malaria, an infectious disease transmitted by mosquitos, with little assurance of receiving reliable drug therapy. According to a survey conducted by the World Health Organization in 2003 between 20 and 90 percent of antimalarial drugs that were tested in seven different African countries failed to meet quality standards. This proves troubling as every country surveyed (Kenya, Ghana, Mali, Mozambique, Gabon, Zimbabwe and Sudan) are considered areas endemic for malaria disease by the Center for Disease Control.

Reasons for this vary, but the WHO charges that changing prescription techniques, poor medical facilities and a growing criminal market all attribute to these areas distributing faulty antimalarial drugs.  As the malaria virus has mutated and become more resistant to medications over the years more physicians are combining different medicines for patients, which leaves more room for counterfeit drugs to get into the mix. Poverty in these areas also leads to underfunded laboratories, poorly trained physicians, poor drug handling and bad manufacturing practices. And as popularized in the recent “60 Minutes” nine-month investigation, there has been a recent acceleration all over the world in drug counterfeiting and cargo theft.

Fake antimalarial drugs in other countries are typically packaged to look like brand name drugs. They are ineffective usually because they contain less than the required amount of active ingredient, lack the active ingredient all together, or are cut with harmful substances. Medical facilities in poorer countries also tend to carry low quality antimalaria medication that use cheaper and not as affective ingredient alternatives. Another counterfeit technique is selling expired drugs that are repackaged with new expiration dates.

Untreated or poorly treated malaria can kill you, as it does over 800,000 people a year, according to the WHO. Nobody traveling to endemic areas should risk their health and life by depending on hospitals local to the area when they have access to more trustworthy clinics in the US.

If you are traveling soon and live in the tri-state area, visit this travel clinic in NYC to get the proper travel immunization medicines to assure you have a safe journey. You’ll be helped by a board certified doctor will years of experience in travel health. Wherever you’re going, travel medicine office nyc can provide you with all the information, health advice and needed vaccinations/medicines for you before embarking on your journey.

Visit get travel immunization in NYC office or call 212-696-5900 to learn more about protecting your health abroad.

Need to escape NYC for a while? Visit a travel immunization clinic first

New York City is like a jungle unnaturally overpopulated with primates. People hang from fire escapes howling at people walking by trying to cover their heads from dripping air conditioners and rove wads of spit. Cars move like grazing livestock, tapping the break as often as we blink. Commercial vehicles sound like elephants at stop lights and fart hot, black smoke into the face of men dipping into yellow cabs, which themselves seem like fifty different breeds of dogs bred to serve New Yorkers.  There are people everywhere dealing with constant invasion from the lesser species of rodents and insects into their homes. Our canopy consists of drying wardrobes and peeling advertisements while skyscrapers sit like mountain ranges that have been thoroughly mined within.

I sit in my living room in an old neighborhood in Brooklyn and I wonder: how many people have lived in my apartment and sat in this room dreaming of an escape?

Detox, let your pores breath for a while, and escape for a week or two after visiting a travel clinic in NYC. Pull your bathing suits down from storage and travel to Central or South America and do nothing but sunbathe and relax. Every New Yorker deserves a break from squeezing into subway cars and eating stale bagels every day. Spread out in the sand and order a drink at noon. Wake up late, read a book without people peering over your shoulder, walk outside holding nothing but sunglasses.

Now more than ever traveling is affordable and convenient. Commercial airlines offer daily flights that last no more than 15 hours nonstop, no matter where you want to go. Popular websites such as Priceline.com and Expedia.com offer discounted flights, hotels and coupons that make getting deals as easy as a clicking your mouse. It can literally take 15 minutes to book a roundtrip flight and a week stay at a resort in Rio de Janeiro. And because tourism flourishes the closer you get to the equator a large percentage of people speak English, the concierge at your hotel may even know someone from your hometown.

And by living in a tri-state area you have convenient access to travel immunization in NYC offices that will ensure you receive the proper medications and vaccines before you leave. Take advantage of pre-travel consultation from a trained travel doctor before going anywhere. Different countries, even different areas within the same country, all have unique health issues that travelers should be aware of. The best way to protect your health while abroad is by visiting a clinic that specializes in travel medicine for a consultation 4 to 6 weeks prior to leaving. Even if you’re leaving tomorrow you can still benefit from meeting with a travel health professional today to take care of any issues you may not be aware you’ll have when traveling to your destination.

Check out this travel immunization clinic next time that car alarm goes off outside your window at 5am. Just found yourself getting irritable at an older woman walking too slow ahead of you? It’s time you got out of this town for a week. If you need travel medicine buy your plane ticket, then make an appointment to meet with an experienced travel doctor who will prepare you for your holiday. Just take that train you know so well up to 42^nd street at either Bryant Park or Grand Central and walk a couple of blocks down to discuss your travel needs with their helpful staff.

It’s time for a real vacation south of the city, and I don’t mean Florida. Log onto their website or call 212-696-5900 to start preparing for your escape.

What are the Differences Between a Clinic and a Travel Clinic?

The answer to this question may seem obvious but many people—even those with plans to travel abroad—do not understand it as clearly as they should. A clinic, obviously, is there to help you with any threat to your well being and good health, a travel clinic exists to make sure that your trip abroad goes off without a hitch and helps to protect against the many illnesses that are still out there in the wide world. There are also protocols for the world traveler. For instance, how any people realize that in order to visit countries in sub-Saharan Africa or tropical South America proof of a yellow fever vaccine is required for entry?

Finding a good travel clinic is of great importance to any one leaving the borders of the United States. In order to find a good travel clinic there are certain things that one should be aware of:

Vaccines

Travel immunization clinics offer vaccines for all the diseases that still ravage the world. Just because America has beaten many of these awful bugs does not mean that the possibility of contracting them somewhere else has gone by the wayside. In fact, a good travel clinic will offer vaccines for yellow fever, hepatitis (both A & B), tetanus, typhoid vaccine, rabies, meningitis, Japanese encephalitis, polio and malaria—and more.

Travel Tips

A good travel clinic will also talk to you regarding many of the mistakes that travelers make when abroad that can threaten your health in a host of ways. These mistakes include, but are not limited to, drinking the local water instead of bottled varieties, eating the local fruit peeled instead of peeling it yourself to insure less of the possibility of contamination, and the need for sunscreen and insect repellent in order to stave off many serious unplanned medical problems that can arise.

In other words, the difference between a clinic and a travel clinic NYC is that if you are planning to travel in the near future, it is of tantamount importance to get to a board-certified, doctor-run travel clinic in order to protect your health in ways that you may not even realize are possible.