Internet Guide to Travel Health

Citation

Cronau, D. (2005), "Internet Guide to Travel Health", Online Information Review, Vol. 29 No. 4, pp. 427-428. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520510617910

This is a quite extensive annotated guide to internet sources related to travel health, and it contains descriptions and evaluations of over 400 web sites specifically related to travel health. The sites range from general travel health to pre‐travel planning and more specific issues related to the concerns on health when travelling – travel diseases, conditions, ailments, etc.

Sections listing sites on interactive travel tools, organizations, full‐text publications, and other sources add value to this book as a pre‐travel gift, public/school/university library resource, or a great general read. Additionally, it has been professionally recommended during pre‐publication reviews for health care advisors, hospital, and community libraries for its value in advising clients on how to stay healthy during travel.

The extensive nature of this title is best reflected in its contents pages:

1. 1.

   Introduction – includes introduction to the internet, evaluating web content, web directories, and staying healthy and well.

2. 2.

   General travel health sites.

3. 3.

   Pre‐travel planning – checklists, documentation, immunisations, medications, health examinations and insurance.

4. 4.

   Specific issues and concerns – accidents, car travel, bus/train travel, children travelling alone, travelling with children, cruising, death, disabilities, evacuation services, health tourism, medical care while travelling, medications, natural disasters, pets, quarantine, seniors, weather, women travelling alone.

5. 5.

   Diseases, conditions, and ailments – air/road rage, allergies, asthma, altitude sickness, arthritis, back problems, bites/stings, cold weather conditions, deep vein thrombosis, dengue fever and other hemorrhagic fevers, dental problems, diabetes, diarrhoea, ear problems, exercise before/during travel, fear of flying, food‐borne illnesses, hepatitis, HIV/AIDS, jet lag, lung diseases, lyme disease, mad cow disease, malaria, motion sickness, pregnancy, sunburn, heat exhaustion, yellow fever.

6. 6.

   Interactive tools.

7. 7.

   Organizations.

8. 8.

   Full‐text publications.

9. 9.

   Glossary.

10. 10.

    Suggested readings.

11. 11.

    Index.

The extremely broad coverage of this book, as can be seen from the list above, really makes it a great ready reference for nearly every collection. Chapter 6, for example, considers tools that generate dynamic content based on input from site visitors – e.g. driving distance calculators using start and end points to calculate the travelling time and distance between two locations. As with so many books written and published in the USA, there are many examples that deal only with US content – e.g. weather, flight times, etc. Refreshingly, however, this book does include many sites from other countries – e.g. “Ask the doctor” from the UK.

The six‐page (double column) index is extremely useful. Apart from listing health topics such as “accidents” and “AIDS”, it also lists areas such as “aerospace medicine”, “adventure travel”, “automobile driving”, with many sub‐topics. The index includes indications of a topic containing figures or tables in the book as well, a very useful feature. The short list of “suggested readings” is international in focus and right up to date, as is the eight‐page glossary and the list of organisations annotated in Chapter 7.

In terms of presentation this is a very easy to negotiate book. Web site titles and their addresses are in bold print with paragraph spacings between annotations. A box with a tick is used to denote major resources with authoritative and original content.

This is an interesting and informative book, not only of value to libraries, but also a lovely gift for anybody dreaming of travel!