Welcome to Travelturtle, the travel health advice site that provides you with country specific medical and vaccination reports usually only available to registered UK healthcare professionals.
Use this page to access information about travelling with bowel disease, and Chrons Disease abroad.
- Find generic information about travelling with Chrons and more general bowel disease travel advice.
- Find hints on tips about preparatory steps to take to manage bowel disease abroad.
- Read tips on how to deal with the symptoms whilst travelling and upon arrival to your destination.
- Access information for Chrons Disease travel advice on topics such as safety when travelling.
Inflammatory bowel disease |
Patients should avoid
- risking travel when unwell or during a flare-up
- taking risks with food hygiene
- travelling without insurance
Precautions patients should take with bowel disease abroad:
- establish an agreed plan on managing flare-ups
- rigorously avoid risky foods
Cases vary in severity and the more severe the disease the greater the precautions.
Preparation when travelling with Crohn's and other bowel disease - Immunosuppressive therapy or high-dose steroids render some live travel vaccines unsuitable and may affect the response to others.
- Antibiotics may be needed to prevent travellers' diarrhoea - either to be taken regularly or in case of a bout of travellers' diarrhoea.
- Regular blood tests should be done before travelling to ensure there is no decrease in blood count or other problems.
- People with severe inflammatory bowel disease might want to consider oral cholera vaccine, which may have some preventive effect against travellers' diarrhoea.
- Patients will need special advice about food hygiene, water purification and travellers' diarrhoea.It is vitally important that they wash their hands.
Getting there
- Steroids increase the risk of deep vein thrombosis associated with flying. Patients should keep mobile, wear flight socks and take plenty of non-alcoholic drinks.
- Patients should avoid long, overcrowded journeys on local transport as prolonged contact increases the risk of contracting infections.
- If the patient is on immunosuppressive treatment they should seek medical attention early if they feel at all unwell or develop a fever.
|