Useful travel health links

Resources for travel health care

Shopping for travel health insurance

The quickest, easiest, and most economical way to find travel health insurance is to use the comparison shopping sites:

• SquareMouth (Squaremouth.com)
• InsureMyTrip.com ( Insuremytrip.com)

You put in your trip details, it quickly shows you a side-by-side analysis of how much a policy would cost at each of 16 major travel insurers such as Travel Guard (Travelguard.com).

Medical evacuation and assistance insurance

If all you want is the assurance you would be able to get home quickly in the event of a medical emergency, consider signing up for medical evacuation insurance. There are several outfits providing medical evacuation insurance starting under $100. Peruse them all; pick the one that best suits your travel needs: Medexassist.com, iamat.org, Medjetassist.com.

Other useful travel health links

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (www.cdc.gov) - The American government's CDC will caution you about health threats and which vaccines to stick yourself with (for Europe, none you don't routinely get in childhood are required, and very few others are even remotely recommended). They maintain a useful "Travelers' Health" section—currently at wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel, though that link has changed in the past so if it doesn't work, try finding it from the homepage.

World Health Organization (www.who.int) - The United Nations' WHO does an excellent job of pouncing on any health threat to the public, no matter how minor, and smothering it with travel warnings and provisos. Overly-cautious alerts notwithstanding—reading just CDC reports, you'd think breathing the air in Iowa was the world's leading cause of death—this remains the single best repository of the official word on all health related issues around the world.

IAMAT (www.iamat.org) - The International Association for Medical Assistance to Travelers is chock full of advice on travel health, and serves as a sort of free health insurance. You can become a member at no charge (they do appreciate donations), and you get a directory of doctors around the world who will be happy to treat you (the docs may charge you, they may not; still, the free list of English-speaking doctors is a boon).

International Society for Travel Medicine (www.istm.org) - This is actually an industry organization, one to which doctors who specialize in travel medicine can belong, but it also has some nifty recourses for the public, including a list of travel health clinics.

Medic Alert (www.medicalert.org) - Discuss any chronic condition with your doctor before leaving. If you have epilepsy, diabetes, or a heart condition and don't already have a Medic Alert Identification tag or bracelet—recognized by docs the world over and giving them instant, 24-hour access to your personal health records—do yourself a favor and get one. They also offer a $100 travel insurance policy you might want to look into.