Travel Medicine and the Returned Traveller — Gold Coast
Our physicians provide specialist advice both before travel and after it. Pre-travel consultation covers vaccination and preventive medication tailored to the itinerary and the traveller. Post-travel assessment covers illness acquired overseas, where the range of possible diagnoses is much wider than in someone who has not travelled.
Before you travel
Pre-travel advice is individualised to your destinations, the style and duration of travel, the season, and your own health, medications and immune status. It may cover:
- Travel vaccination advice, including routine, recommended and required vaccines
- Malaria risk assessment and prophylaxis
- Travellers' diarrhoea prevention and standby treatment
- Advice for travellers who are immunocompromised, pregnant, or living with chronic disease
- Advice for people visiting friends and relatives in their country of origin, a group at higher risk than tourists
- Altitude, rabies, dengue and arbovirus risk, and insect-bite avoidance
- Documentation requirements for entry to particular countries
Fever in the returned traveller
Fever after travel should never be assumed to be trivial. Some causes are rapidly life-threatening, and the incubation period, destination and exposure history narrow the possibilities substantially.
We assess and manage:
- Malaria — which is a medical emergency and must be excluded promptly in anyone febrile after travel to a malarious area
- Dengue, chikungunya, Zika and other arboviral infections
- Enteric fever (typhoid and paratyphoid)
- Rickettsial infections and scrub typhus
- Leptospirosis and melioidosis
- Persistent travellers' diarrhoea and parasitic gut infection
- Schistosomiasis and other helminth infections
- Skin lesions acquired overseas, including cutaneous larva migrans and leishmaniasis
- Respiratory infection acquired overseas
- Multidrug-resistant organisms acquired during overseas hospitalisation
Tropical infections and zoonoses
We also see patients with infections acquired from animal or environmental exposure in Australia and overseas, including Q fever, brucellosis, leptospirosis, melioidosis, psittacosis, and infections following animal bites or scratches.
Urgent presentations
Anyone who is febrile within twelve months of travel to a malarious area, or who is unwell with fever after any travel, needs same-day assessment. Please phone our rooms on 07 5530 0770, or direct the patient to an emergency department if they are systemically unwell.
Referrals
A current referral addressed to our rooms, or to one of our specialists by name, is required before an appointment can be arranged.
Gold Coast Infection Specialists Mater Private Hospital Gold Coast Specialist Suites Ground Floor, 14 Hill Street, Southport QLD 4215 Phone: 07 5530 0770