Travellers often get diarrhoea from eating and drinking foods and beverages that have no adverse (bad) effects on local residents.
Traveller’s diarrhoea (two words that shouldn’t be combined in real life situations), is a stomach and intestinal infection that occurs as a result of unsanitary handling of food. Food handlers who do not wash their hands after they use the bathroom can transmit the infection to people who consume the contaminated food.
The onset of traveller's diarrhoea (TD) usually occurs within the first week of travel, but may occur at any time while travelling, and even after returning home, depending on the incubation period of the infectious agent.
The most important determinant of risk is the traveller's destination.
Though unpleasant, most cases of TD are mild, and resolve in a few days without medical intervention.
Recommendations for prevention include:
· Frequent hand washing (hand washing is the single most effective method of preventing transmission of microorganisms that cause diarrhea).
· Maintaining good hygiene and using only safe water (water boiled or appropriately treated by the traveller or bottled water) for drinking and tooth brushing.
· Using only Safe beverages like carbonated bottled beverages. Caution should be exercised with tea, coffee, and other hot beverages that may be only heated, not boiled.
· Insisting that bottled water be unsealed in your presence whenever you visit any restaurant (reports of locals filling empty bottles with untreated tap water and reselling them as "purified" water has surfaced).When in doubt, a bottled carbonated beverage is the safest choice, since it is difficult to simulate carbonation when refilling a used bottle.
· Avoid ice, which may not have been made with safe water.
· Avoid green salads, because it is unlikely that the lettuce and other uncooked ingredients will have been washed with safe water.
· Avoid eating raw fruits and vegetables unless cleaned and peeled personally by the traveler.
Primary treatment includes drinking lots of fluids and replacing lost salts (oral rehydration therapy/salt-sugar solution).
Medical care should be sought in the following cases:
· Blood or mucus in the diarrhea.
· Significant abdominal pain.
· High fever.
Estimates of the percentage of people affected range from 20% to 50% among travellers to the developing world. Traveller’s diarrhea is particularly common among people travelling to Asia (except Japan), the Middle East, Africa, Mexico, and Central and South America. However, it has been reported in some form in virtually every travel destination in the world.
Traveller’s diarrhea is also known as "Montezuma's revenge, "turistas", or "Aztec two step" for travellers' diarrhea contracted in Mexico or other Latin American countries , "Pharaoh's Revenge," "mummy's tummy," or "Cairo two-step" in Egypt. You require just ‘two steps’.
The name Montezuma's revenge (var. Moctezuma's revenge) refers to Moctezuma II (1466–1520), the Tlatoani (ruler) of the Aztec civilization who was overthrown by the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés in the early 16th century, thereby bringing large portions of what is now Mexico and Central America under the rule of the Spanish crown.
Can Nigerians have traveller's diarrhoea????????????
My answer is YES!!!!!!!!
kindly drop your comments............
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