Jaunted

Tags: Medical Travel / Travel Health / Ghana Travel / Africa Travel / → All Tags

Medical Tourism Booms In Ghana, Of All Places

The west African country of Ghana hasn't been too high up on our list of wanna-visits, although its position improved a lot when we heard Ghana is the second highest producer of cocoa - maybe that chocolate bar we just downed came out of Ghana. Anyway, Ghana is actually going for a different target now: the health tourist.

It turns out that quite a lot of Ghanaians get medical degrees overseas, and one way of enticing them back to Ghana has been to open a bunch of top-class medical clinics. Sadly, of course, the average Ghanaian citizen can't afford to visit such a clinic—but a tourist can, and for a normal tourist, the prices are bargain basement while the care is excellent.

Cosmetic surgery is high on the list of tourist-wants, although simpler treatments like massages and detox are popular too. So far, the foreign visitors seem to be mostly the wealthy from other African countries, but when celebrities start getting boob-jobs in Ghana, you can say that you read it here first.

Related Stories:
· Ghana Targets Health Tourism Boom [BBC]
· Ghana Travel Guide [Jaunted]

[Photo: bagaball]

Tags: Open Threads / Swine Flu / Travel Health / H1N1 / → All Tags

Have You Encountered Swine Flu In Your Travels This Year?

'Tis the year of the Swine Flu and things just haven't died down like we'd hoped they would. Now that the intense and occasionally fatal flu has affected everyone from D-List celebs to former All-You-Can-Jetters, it's apparent that it's not going anywhere anytime soon—or rather, it's going everywhere.

So we want to know: what's been your experience with Swine Flu this year? Have you taken to wearing face masks on flights and in subways or do you scrunch up your nose at those who do? Have you gotten and survived Swine Flu? Has anyone you know been under the weather with it, and if so, where do you think they go it? We're just wondering exactly how prevalent it is in places of travel, versus say at restaurants and in your local bowling alley. Or has your bowling alley had its balls sanitized? Hmm??

Let us know your travel Swine Flu experience in the comments!

Related Stories:
· Swine Fly Now Attacking D-List Celebs In Addition To Air Travelers [Jaunted]
· Is Swine Fly Hysteria A US Tourism Conspiracy? [Jaunted]
· Swine Fly Has A Grip On Every Country Except Antarctica [Jaunted]
· Travel Health coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: OhLaLa Mag]

Tags: Travel Health / Travel News / Barack Obama / → All Tags

'With Liberty And Travel For All'; Obama Lifts HIV Travel Ban

Although the travel health focus right now is on the Swine Flu, it's nonetheless important to remember that Swine Flu isn't the end-all, be-all of dangerous diseases right now. After all, millions of people in the world don't have it, unlike HIV and AIDS. Up until this weekend, those with HIV were banned from traveling to the United States due to an archaic law which was just lifted by Obama in response to a UNAIDS request for all countries to end such discriminatory travel bans: "Placing travel restrictions on people living with HIV has no public health justification. It is also a violation of human rights," said UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibe.

Although the ban won't be fully lifted until next year, those who have HIV and haven't been able to visit the US and make their dreams come true of going to Graceland and eating a slice of New York pizza now can start booking their flights.

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Tags: Germs / Travel Gear / Travel Gadgets / Stupid Ideas / Travel Health / → All Tags

What Type Of Traveler Packs A Hand-Held UV Germ Scanner?

If you love getting out of the house but hate the "other people exist" part of traveling, there are a number of things you can do. Our recommendation is an mp3 player and a really good set of noise-canceling headphones. Failing that, books and earplugs work pretty well on airplanes. But there are certain parts of the world where interacting with other people's germs is unavoidable. Getting rid of all of them is impossible, you know.

But that isn't stopping travel companies from marketing hand-held UV lights, like the $79 Nano-UV Scanner, to germphobic travelers. There's a well-defined and well-justified use for UV bulbs in disinfecting water when you're camping—though there are easier ways and you better know what you're doing—but campers aren't the ones being targeted here:

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Tags: Travel Health / Disease / Southeast Asia Travel / → All Tags

New Malaysian Malaria: Monkeys and Mosquitoes To Blame

Travelers to Southeast Asia beware: there's a new strain of malaria in town. Researchers have recently figured out that the Plasmodium knowlesi strain of malaria, which used to be confined to Malaysian macaque monkeys, can kill humans too.

The especially nasty part about this new human strain of malaria is that doctors have a hard time recognizing it. Symptoms and disease progression look scarily similar to other less serious forms of malaria, so you might end up dead before the doctors realize they should've done something differently.

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Tags: Airplane Food / Travel Health / India Travel / Vegetarian Travel / Indian Airlines / → All Tags

Vegetarian's Life Ruined By Eating Eggshell On Indian Airlines Flight

Keshav Kaushik, a lacto-vegetarian who abstains from meat and eggs, boarded an Indian Airlines flight in February of 2003. He informed the air-hostess about his dietary preferences and she indicated understanding. Despite this, a cake that Kaushik was served had a piece of egg shell. Hilarity failed to ensue and the case has been making its way through the Indian court system ever since:

The passenger became nauseous and also fell unconscious. The flying staff and other fellow passenger rendered necessary help and after disembarking at Delhi airport he lodged a complaint with the consumer court. Kaushik further alleged in his complaint that 35 days after the incident he suffered haemorrhage in the abdomen and had to be hospitalized to undergo surgery.

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Tags: Smoking Bans / Travel Health / Switzerland Travel / Geneva / → All Tags

Geneva Joins Most Of Europe In Banning Smoking In Public Places

For travelers who want to sit in a café without the health risk of passive smoking, we pointed out last year on our worldwide smoking ban map that most of Europe is smoke-free, but there was an odd exception: the beautiful Swiss city of Geneva.

A legal loophole meant that the attempt to ban smoking in public places failed and smokers were able to continue lighting up all over Geneva. But now that very opportunity has been, well, extinguished. Geneva held a referendum on Sunday and a whopping 81.77% of locals supported a ban on public smoking across the region.

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Tags: Travel Gear / Travel Health / Bad Ideas / → All Tags

Is Butt Comfort A Priority On Long Flights? The 'Skwoosh' Can Help

Do you have trouble "sitting down?" Does the thought of "bending your knees" or "getting in a chair" make you cringe? If so, then retailer TravelSmith might have the perfect travel gear accessory for you. The SKWOOSH Traveler Seat Pad is a brand new product that helps you accomplish, in the context of modern airports and airplanes, what humans have been doing unaided for the better part of 10,000 years.

In the category of "most offensive comfort travel gear," this nonsense isn't even close. And yet—and yet...

Travelers regularly spend hundreds of dollars to reduce their carry-on weight by mere ounces. There's an entire market in multitasking travel devices designed specifically for that purpose, and it moves billions of dollars per year. Meanwhile other people are carrying around portable seats to cover the chairs they're already sitting on? That seems unnecessary.

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Tags: Bali Travel / Travel Health / Disease / → All Tags

Bali Tourists Bitten By Rabies Scare

The Indonesian island paradise of Bali, a major tourist hangout, seems to be having a few glitches lately. As if running out of alcohol wasn't already a pretty big problem, now the rabid dog problem looks like it is getting a bit out of control.

Previously rabies-free, the disease hit Bali last year, but it's only in the last few months that the drama has really hit the press and worried tourists. Ten locals have even died from rabies in the past year, and now tourists who get bitten by suspicious-looking dogs might have nowhere to turn—post-exposure vaccine supplies at Bali hospitals are pretty much non-existent.

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Tags: Swine Flu / Travel Health / H1N1 / Celeb Travel / → All Tags

Swine Flu Now Attacking D-List Celebs In Addition To Air Travelers

The silent menace is still out there, and it's attacking our celebrities; it's Swine Flu, and so far it's stuck with D-list celebs like Lisa Rinna, Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley of Harry Potter fame), and now Marilyn Manson.

The announcement from the rocker came via his MySpace blog, and here is all of it, short and sweet:

So I have officially been diagnosed, by a real doctor, with THE SWINE FLU. I know everyone will suggest that f***ing a pig is how this disease was obtained. However, the doctor said, my past choices in women have, in 'no way' contributed to... me acquiring this mysterious sickness. Unfortunately, I am going to survive.

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Tags: Travel Gear / Travel Health / Bad Ideas / → All Tags

Plonk Down $250 To Monitor Exactly How Many Calories You Burn Traveling

Ancient nutritionists who roamed the savanah eons ago discovered a mathematical formula for losing weight: eat less calories than you burn. A few million years later, their descendants amended the formula: eat less calories than you burn, but don't assume you're burning much more than 2,000 calories per day because you're not. If the average person exercises really hard they can bump their calorie burning from 2,000 to 2,500 per day - roughly one extra soft drink with dinner. So mostly the magic secret to weight lose is to stop counting calories and just change your diet.

Or, alternatively, you could pay $250 for the bodybugg State-of-the-Art Calorie Management System, a web-enabled wristband that uses specialized sensors to monitor how many calories you're burning to 90% accuracy. It's a sedentary traveler's ultimate health device. Now you can know whether you burned 1,000 calories sitting on the plane or 1,010 calories, plus/minus 100 calories.

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Tags: Japan Travel / Trains / Train Travel / Travel Health / Travel Safety / → All Tags

Groping Epidemic On Tokyo Trains Has Us Watching Our Butt

On the whole, Japan is a dream for travelers; it's full of polite people who go out of their way to help tourists. But that can all come to an abrupt stop when you get on a train in Tokyo (or, to be fair, probably any big city). That's when the gropers appear, and we don't mean the fish.

Authorities are warning travelers—especially females—to watch out for subway passengers who feel the need to grope them. They say they're particularly concerned at the moment because many of the recently-nabbed gropers say they have been inspired by websites on groping. One recent offender said in his defense: "He had viewed a website that detailed how and when to grope people and wanted to confirm if the hints worked..." And he'd even traveled 60 miles out of his way to ride a train line the website listed as being "easy" for groping.

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