Travelvax Australia has made a fresh call for Australian travellers to take the utmost care to avoid insect bites while on holiday, and in the event of being bitten to seek medical attention immediately.
It is also highly recommended that you speak with you regular GP or travel doctor about vaccines available for countries you are visiting.
According to Travelvax, in the first 13 weeks of 2014, 567 Australians were told they had contracted Dengue Fever, and the company expects that by the end of the year this number will have passed the 1,844 recorded in 2013, which was the highest total in decades.
A further 86 Australians have been treated for malaria (with a total of 414 cases confirmed last year), and 12 cases of Chikungunya Fever have been recorded (a record 133 were confirmed in 2013). Australia also had its first confirmed case of Zika virus recently, in a Queensland traveller who is believed to have been infected in the Cook Islands, and four cases of Japanese Encephalistis were recorded in Australia last year – as many cases of the rare disease the country has seen in the preceding decade.
Health authorities are worried that many who receive insect bites while on holiday – generally in Asian or African nations – do not bother to get them checked, resulting in diseases unwittingly being taken back to tourists’ home countries.
This article originally appeared in the International Health & Travel Insurance Journal