Luis will travel on the first of September to a natural park in Colombia. But first, he waits patiently at the reception of the International Health Center to pay the fees for the vaccines that have to be administered and thus be able to enter the country without problems. There it is mandatory to have a card that certifies that you have protection against yellow fever. The young man lived an unusual experience for many travelers: he got an appointment to get vaccinated just a week in advance. “You have been very lucky,” answers Esther Redondo, head of the International Health Technical Unit of the building located in the Salamanca district, where the common thing is that during the months of May, June, July and until August 20 the pressure assistance is very high due to the despair of travelers who do not take this management into account in advance and travel agencies that do not properly report inoculations.
In the other corner of the majestic building on Calle de Montesca, 22, Fernando is preparing for his nurse to administer two doses: one for hepatitis A and the other for yellow fever. The young man will travel with his partner to Kenya and the Maldives for their honeymoon, so both have made sure they have everything in order and avoid any setbacks on those special dates. The two patients are part of the 9,000 people to whom this center, dependent on Madrid Health, has attended so far this year, many of these appointments centralized in the hottest months of the year.
“We have put 7,997 doses until July 31,” says Dr. Esther Redondo, head of the International Health Technical Unit. This center is one of the centers that informs and vaccinates the most foreign travelers in all of Spain and the only one in the country that has a management entrustment endowed by the Ministry of Health to a local corporation to provide care to international travelers.
Despite the fact that Luis got a date a week before going to this health service, the truth is that it is usually stressful for many tourists. “Agencies sell a trip to Kenya and do not warn that you cannot enter this country if you are not vaccinated for yellow fever,” says Redondo. This results in travelers becoming desperate, not finding an appointment and generating “a lot of stress and pressure for care”.
Despite the fact that more and more services like this have been opened in recent years, the reality is that »a center that opens, a center that becomes saturated«, assures Redondo and insists on the importance of not only thinking about it with a month in advance of the trip. “No matter how you go, you have to return with at least the same state of health with which you left. We cannot put health at risk”, insists the doctor responsible for this municipal service.
Vaccines from the Madrid City Council International Health Center Guillermo Navarro
In the Madrid’s community There are six international vaccination spaces. Among them the hospitals of La Paz, Carlos III and 12 de Octubre; the International Vaccination Center of the Community, the External Health Center, located on Calle de Francisco de Silvela; and the International Health Center of the Madrid City Council.
The latter, since 2007, has a service charter that obliges it to assume quality commitments with the citizens, for which reason they are subject to an annual evaluation and an external audit outside the consistory every three years and must be renewed transparently. , making the results public. In addition to all this, calendar vaccines are supplied, they not only serve travelers with a health card from the Community of Madrid -as in the Francisco Silvela point- and it is a reference service in the region for human rabies immunoprophylaxis .
personalized attention
Although administering these doses for international tourists is the main task that is carried out, the advice given by health professionals also plays a very important role. You should always ask about the destination and the type of trip, because “tourism is not the same at the health level as going as a missionary or backpacker and traveling by car or motorcycle is not the same as by bike,” Dr. Redondo emphasizes. to this newspaper.
The doctors also make sure to attend individually to all those who come to this center on a daily basis. A few meters from Luis and Fernando, Esperanza and Siporah are in consultation, as they take a plane next Sunday to their country of origin, Cameroon. “Esperanza is Spanish and, having always accessed our health system, she has been given vaccines that her mother does not have and that we must administer to her,” explains Belén Álvarez, the doctor who treats them. “Not only must the destination be taken into account, but also the people and their previous health situation,” says the doctor.
In the street of Montesca, 22 work 12 professionals. Among them, nurses specialized in vaccines, three family doctors with a master’s degree in this field, a microbiologist expert in Tropical Medicine and a preventivist and epidemiologist.
Change of trend in destinations
The vaccine of the hepatitis A It is the one that most travelers wear. With a similar rate –65%–, it is followed by typhoid fever, and 50% of the people who attend this service are given yellow fever fever.
The administration of these vaccines has also revealed the change in trend that has taken place in terms of travel destinations, especially as a result of the pandemic. If before 2020, Southeast Asian countries such as India or Thailand led the lists of preferred destinations, in 2022 that trend was reversed and the main destination was Tanzania, followed by Peru, Colombia and Kenya.
This center places a lot of emphasis on informing travelers about the conditions of their destinations, so health advice, including the importance of having health insurance or protection against insects, is essential. He climate change It has caused that in several areas of Southeast Asia as well as in South American countries it has rained “like never before,” Redondo points out, so that the mosquito population, for example, has increased and is expected to continue to do so.
“We are subscribed to alerts from the Ministry of Health and we receive one or two a week informing us about the situation in other places because it changes very often and we have to adapt”. Japanese encephalitis has increased so much that »now it is considered to administer a dose even to those people who travel for work for only five days«. In addition to all this, the workers of this municipal service take into account the socio-political situation of the destinations of the travelers. »If someone comes to tell us that they are traveling to northern Ethiopia, there will be a doctor trying to convince them not to go«, says Dr. Esther Redondo.
2023-08-23 02:26:15
#Travelers #trouble #vaccines #minute #Agencies #notify #doses