Medical Kit

When you can't go to the local pharmacy to pick up some medicine, you need to have enough supplies to treat yourself. You also need to know how to use them. We researched many travel health websites to determine the most practical items to bring. It's easy to go overboard. One of the doctors we consulted thought we'd be able to treat a small village for at least a year!

Certificate of Vaccination

Many tropical countries require a certificate of vaccination against Yellow Fever when arriving from a region that has Yellow Fever. All other vaccines are optional, but for a trip like ours, the following are typically recommended...

• Yellow Fever (mandatory)
• Typhoid Fever
• Hepatitis A
• Hepatitis B (2 jabs)
• Meningitis ACWY
• Rabies (3 jabs)
• Polio adult booster
• Measles, Mumps & Rubella adult booster
• Tetnus & Diphtheria adult booster
• Malaria prophalactic pills

Fortunately for us, we travel frequently enough to have received most of what was needed prior to getting ready for this trip. The jabs that were left to get, we scheduled a few months in advance and made sure all were listed on our Certificate of Vaccination. The cost of immunizations is quite high, especially in the US. As well, most insurance companies will not cover travel vaccinations. According to our insurance company, if the doctor's practice doesn't indicate "Travel Related" on the paperwork, though, it may be paid by insurance! We got what was free in the states and decided to get the rest of our immunizations in the UK at The Hospital For Tropical Diseases (www.thehtd.org) the staff was very knowledgeable and the jabs were a fraction of what they would have cost us back in the US.

First Aid Training

Knowing how to deal with an emergency situation is extremely important, especially when traveling to remote areas far away from any kind of medical help. Only one of us had previous Wilderness First Aid training, which definitely isn't good enough for the type of travel we plan to experience. All members of any expedition should have some first aid training, as you never know what situation you will be faced with. We decided to take a 2-day Wilderness First Aid training course with High Peak First Aid (www.hpfa.org.uk) in the Derbyshire Dales. The course was ideal, it was a small group of only 7 people, the training was both in classroom and outside amongst the rolling hills, cold weather and rain. On a normal day cold weather and rain isn't so ideal, but I say this because it gave us the opportunity to practice techniques in not so ideal conditions! We covered all injuries experienced in all scenarios - outdoor or sporting activities, vehicle accidents, bugs-bites & stings, CPR, etc.

Insurance

Health insurance on the road, when you are newly unemployed isn't an easy thing to come by. Let me rephrase that - AFFORDABLE comprehensive insurance is difficult to come by!! We wanted a policy that would cover us for at least 2 years, provide emergency medical treatment should a catastrophe happen and have coverage once we return to the US at least until we go back to work. We were luck enough to find a policy that provided all of that for us, with the help of Keith Campbell from Campbell Financial Group (www.campbellfinancialgroupllc.com). With regard to Personal Property Insurance - that is something we are still working on and hope to find before hitting the road!