Ten Years Strong and Looking to the Future

Not quite sure where March went to but I've been very busy indeed working on Faculty of Travel Medicine activities.  Just published the programme for the Annual Symposium, entitled 'Ten Years Strong and Looking to the Future' being held on 6th October 2016 in Glasgow.  The FTM is 10 years old this year and in addition to the conference there will be a dinner the night before.  The programme itself is interesting and one new feature will present two Cameron Lockie Prize winners talking about the projects they undertook for their Diploma in Travel Medicine.  Cameron Lockie was a GP with a strong interest in Travel Medicine and he was largely responsible for the beginning of Travel Medicine education when he took his ideas to Scotland - the rest is history.  I feel I have a lot to be grateful to him for, and he was also my supervisor on the very first Diploma course then the Masters part of my education as well.  Today, the 'top' student of the class is awarded the Cameron Lockie Prize.

To visit the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons website for more details click here and to view the programme click here or on the image below

Zika Virus Resources

Information about Zika has been published in abundance so here are some of the many resources to help you access them quickly.

• Public Health England, Health protection guidance which has detailed resources available
• European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) 
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 
• World Health Organization

and for our travellers 

• Fitfortravel
• NHS Choices 
• Mosquito bite avoidance for travellers leaflet 

Mosquito Bite Avoidance Leaflet

With so much information right now about Zika virus, mosquito bite avoidance advice is even more important to convey to our travellers.  There are a number of leaflets out there, some excellent ones from CDC.  However,  a welcome new one for UK travellers was posted on the Public Health England website today here and for direct access to the leaflet click on the image below.  It's two sided, have a careful look!

Disease and vaccine translations into other languages

Amazing document from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (in the USA) of foreign language terms of diseases and vaccines in different countries.  Another table lists the names of specific vaccines that are used, or have been used, internationally, along with the manufacturer and more.  These documents come from the CDC Pink book (see here) which is similar to our UK Green book!  For the PDFs of the charts, see here.  Remember this other chart from immunize.org here !

Click on the image below to all the immunisation resources on my website as well

Many thanks go to Rachel Hardy for notifying me about these new charts from the Pink Book.   Rachel is just completing her Diploma in Travel Medicine at RCPS Glasgow - good luck on the final leg Rachel

Practice Nurse Update January 2016

I write a monthly travel health update in Practice Nurse which they kindly allow me to post on my website - I've been writing these since 2010!. Five new items discussed in this current issue: Yellow fever training in Scotland, the work of the FCO, a new CDC app, the FTM/RPS travel conference in April 2016 and a new EU logo for online pharmacy sales. This is just a quick way of keeping yourself up to date, they are short snippets that will take you to further resources.  To see go to the 'Travel Health Update' on my website here and also available on the Practice Nurse website here
Clicking on the image below will take you directly to the article

Travel Medicine: Bites, bumps, burns and more

Joint conference on Monday 11th April 2016 between the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and the Faculty of Travel Medicine.  Geared towards pharmacists interested in travel medicine, but this is also a great programme for all those delivering travel health service.  See here on the RPS website for the programme and to book and here on the RCPSG website

PGD for Revaxis for Travel Purposes

Just found a PGD template for Revaxis which includes TRAVEL in its inclusion criteria from Public Health England, uploaded onto the website in November 2015 and valid until October 2017 see here. 

The PGD still has to be formally authorised and signed by a clinical governance or patient safety lead, who has designated responsibility for signing PGDs on behalf of NHS England for their geographical area to meet the legal requirements for the PGD. However, for those of us with no PGDs for travel vaccines at the current time, this is helpful!

The inclusion statement says 'Individuals aged 10 years and over who: are travelling to an area where medical attention may not be accessible should a tetanus prone wound occur, or will be residing in epidemic or endemic areas where tetanus, diphtheria or poliomyelitis protection is required and the final dose of the relevant antigen was received more than 10 years ago, even if the individual has received 5 doses of tetanus containing vaccine previously' 

You can also click on the image below to  access this PHE template.