ER care and foreign travelers: for comparison:

[hedgehog]

My son came back from a work assignment in India and ended up in the ER for an emergency appendectomy. After being discharged, he ended up back in the ERand back in the hospital. My Dad was with him and told every doctor that came in - "He just got back from 6 weeks in India". It wasn't until the doctor who'd grown up in India came into the room two days later that anyone realized he had malaria.


Fortunately, a few years later, when he went in with fever and chills, someone was on the ball and he was tested for Chikungunya. Since it's viral, they really couldn't do anything for him, but at least he had a proper diagnosis!

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. With the spread northward of mosquitoes

docs above the Mason-dixon line will have a chance to be educated on tropical diseases.

Med school teaches that "when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras."

[hedgehog]

2. It's not so much that doctors and ER staffs should be on the alert for

exotic diseases every time a patient walks in; but when patient walks in with some strange symptoms and has just returned from a place with different diseases, the practitioner should at least go Hmmmmm.....

I love our GP - he diagnosed my daughter's mid-winter poison oak rash because he paid attention when she told him she'd spent winter break clearing brush in South Carolina.