Tips how to stay healthy when being in Nepal
#1 2009-07-23 18:10:15
- grandpayeti
- Nepal Animator
- From: Pokhara
- Registered: 2009-06-14
- Posts: 33
Tips how to stay healthy when being in Nepal
"swine flue screening" at Kathmandu Airport!
Beware...in Nepal are over 30 cases of positive identified "swine flu virus". They are confined and in quarantine. No one has died so far and the treatment seem to work. The 2009 flu pandemic is a global outbreak of a new strain of influenza A virus subtype H1N1, identified in April 2009 and commonly referred to as swine flu, which infects anyone who comes in close proximity of a carrier, even for a short while only!
Strangely these all have been detected by in coming folks at the Kathmandu International Airport. No cases so far are known from inside the country..
All people are screened by professional doctors of the Nepalese Ministry of Health. Be polite and patient, when they ask you for screening...be happy that they do, because who knows who else has been with you at the long air travel journey. It is for your own safety because the check up is effective and for free.
Visitors to Nepal should apply the following rules all the time in order to stay healthy.
1. Wash your hands with soap before touching any food.
Most cases of diarrhea are not even caused by contaminated food in the many restaurants at trekking hubs and tourist spots. Its your own dirt that you fetched from doorknobs, chairs and tables in garden restaurants and shaking hands with each other. Then you order and eat a well prepared and clean sandwich or some finger-chips with dip and "bingo"
2. Avoid green salads and lettuce leaves that are coming with your dish as ornamental addition! There is now way for the cook to get this stuff amoeba free even if he baths the leaves in potassium permanganate as claimed in the menu. We did laboratory tests on that and the large cells of a lettuce leave still contain a number of giardia lambilia and lesser often end-ameba histolitica. These two are the most common gastric infections a trekker or visitor is getting in Nepal at any places . Commonly known as "Kathmandu Quickstep" it can spoil your fun for a full week if not treated well. 2000 mg... yes that is right, two thousand mg of Tinidazole in one dosage! and only one time will do the trick to get rid of amoebas or giardiasis. If the symptoms persist you may have an other bug but that is rare. If however you have a diarrhea with fever and joint pains then there is something really wrong and you need to take antibiotics. These symptoms are causes by a salmonella, which is a serious food poisoning. The antibiotic for this emergency should be in every travelers first aid kit who goes on a longer trek in Nepal. Ciprofloxacin 500 mg every 8 hours for 5-7 days and a lot of liquid...as much as you can drink. You would not go anywhere because you really have to stay put and rest. Yet cases of food poisoning can be avoided also if you do not order scrambled eggs or mixed fried rice or noodles. Ask always food that must be prepared fresh and not pre-cooked stuff from the restaurants fridge during a trek or in very busy places. Do not be tempted by local food where Nepalese truck drivers or Nepalese passengers are eating at a bus stop or so. Better to buy some fresh bananas or oranges and do with this during a trip overland by bus. The Nepalese local restaurants are the fastest way to get ill or unwell for some days and have to rush to toilet every 20 minutes etc. Nepalese are immune for their local bacterias and all sorts of ailments that a foreign visitor is not!
If you want to know something specific about this topic then feel free to ask!
Have fun while traveling through Nepal!
yours
grandpayeti
Last edited by grandpayeti (2009-07-24 02:36:19)
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2009-07-23 18:10:15
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#2 2009-07-24 07:40:18
- jw
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- From: Kathmandu
- Registered: 2009-06-18
- Posts: 10
Re: Tips how to stay healthy when being in Nepal
Maybe Grandpa Yeti, when prescribing drugs like you do in your article, you should make a little side-note of your authority to prescribe drugs. I know you to be a qualified physician, and have asked for your medical advise a number of times already, but for most other readers you could be any other trekking guide giving medical advise...
Last edited by jw (2009-07-24 07:40:55)
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#3 2009-07-24 09:46:16
- grandpayeti
- Nepal Animator
- From: Pokhara
- Registered: 2009-06-14
- Posts: 33
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Re: Tips how to stay healthy when being in Nepal
Thanks jw. Grandpayeti is not a physician but a pharmacist!
However...the two drugs he has described here are well known by those who have a global travelers health care book or a global trekking guide. One can find the same advice for the two mentioned drugs in any "How to stay healthy during traveling" section.
Last edited by grandpayeti (2009-07-24 09:47:59)
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#4 2009-07-26 06:34:15
- Oxybelisfulgitus
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- From: London
- Registered: 2009-06-19
- Posts: 11
Re: Tips how to stay healthy when being in Nepal
I have to make two additional remark to grandpayeti's list of evil stuff that can happen to a visitor to Nepal!
1. Traveling with local buses and squeezed inn between the permanent overcrowded space can be great fun for a foreigner and one should give it a try. It's low budget travel and very cheap. Realize that it takes double the time to reach your destination than if you chose a far more costly air conditioned tourist coach. This is because the locals step in and out at every stop and it is quite a doing to get going again, because they block each others ways and shout and press and there is great chaos at every mile or so.
You come into very close contact to the locals and if you are a woman you better make sure, you stay or sit with your own gender. Between the males is not pretty in some cases. They make raw jokes about you in Nepali. Of course ..since I already know a few words I do defend my self quite well....but that's not the issue.
If you travel in a local bus and have a seat is always better than staying. Having a seat however can be a big surprise afterward. Most the seats are very dirty and the clothing is thorn and behind that clothing....THERE THEY ARE...waiting for you! The fleas & the clothe lice...also known as bed bugs and they are huge! Not small like head lice but almost triple size. The itch is awful and lasts for 36 hours afterward!
How do I avoid this now...well as a seasoned travel writer I know now! Buy some flea powder and apply it directly to your back skin and liberally into the backside of your t-shirt half an hour before the trip and you travel peacefully all the way!
(Mind you...fleas can also cause an infection, because in some parts of the country there is a number of flea born disease known as Japanese encephalitis. One who visits such areas as a development aid worker or researcher should get a vaccination against it about 3 months before. I do not want to scare you off...Kathmandu and the main trekking areas in Nepal are free of this evil. We talk very remote areas in the south east of Nepal here, where tourists probably never come.... but the bugs in the bus are for real and may be a als encountered in the bed of very cheap lodges. Do not sleep in lodges for Nepalese without your protective shield of flea powder etc. Uh...and mosquito repellent does not work on them...I tried it....no effect.
The second evil is lurking on the trekking paths up to an altitude of approximately 3500 meters...maybe even a few hundred meters higher...I am not so sure. And these little critters are the famous South Asian forest and rice field land crawlers that are called LEECHES...yuck!
One does not notice when fetching up a leech. The things suck your blood by applying an anesthetic and an anti-coagulant that makes your blood thinner for easy flow!
Usually one notices this when reaching a lodge and undresses for a shower. Big red spot , lightly swollen and it starts itching after a few hours and last for two days minimum. Wash it with soap, apply an antiseptic like iodine and put a little tape on top so the wound is clean and covered. There is always a small chance to fetch a staphylococci -infection from the surrounding and then your entire foot is swelling. Do not be scared...it does happen very rarely. Such precaution applies also for scratches from thorns or other minor wounds...keep dessinfected and covered while trekking.
Namaste
Nadine
Oxybelisfulgitus
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#5 2009-08-17 04:14:35
- grandpayeti
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- From: Pokhara
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Re: Tips how to stay healthy when being in Nepal
Thank you Oxybelisfulgitus for your enlightening suggestions.
However grandpayeti want to give a remark about flea powder.
If someone uses flea powder , one should be aware that the poison is not really harmless for humans too! To apply it to your T-shirt for a short period of time is o.k. if you wash the shirt afterward with luck warm water and get rid of the stuff. In the long term it can harm you because the human skin absorbs traces of it and they are ending up in your system for at least 36 hours. Small amounts can not make you sick but prolonged use of the stuff can damage ones kidneys.
Also while using it the way you describe there is a need to wash your hands with soap before touching food like a banana or an orange during your trip.
The ingredients of flea powder in South-East Asia and other tropical regions of the world are still suspect. Look at your product for the ingredients descriptions!
Usually it should be DPE (deltametrine pyrethroid ester)
Its Deltamethrin Permetrhrin 0,23% for head lice shampoo because the user is instructed to wash it off and rinse his/her head after approx 5 minutes. Flea powder MUST have a lower concentration" i.e. a chalk powder enforced with Deltamethrin that is called Cypermethrin 1 % to keep the stuff from wandering off into the tissue. Furthermore about 10 to 15 % Methanol should be present in order to make your skin pores bubble up a fraction and close like with feeling a cooling sensation. This all is done to avoid entry into your system.
The here described ingredients of flea powder are a common LAW in the European Community and are made a substitute insecticide for the agriculture poison DDT (dichloro diphenyl trichloro ethane) since DDT is already forbidden in Europe because it hurts the entire range of the bird population and mice etc. which finally ends up into the human consumptive food chain and hurts humans genetically. It is thus not ONLY against plant lice, crab lice, spiders and centipedes.
Now the fact is that cheap agriculture poison and pest control factories in India and in some African countries do not give a damn about formula and laws. Simply there is no authority that controls the use of the stuff. There are huge deposits and storage of DTT in these countries because of Malaria and DDT seem so far the only effective weapon against it. (stupid stupid, because most Mosquito populations are already resistant against DDT) So how do these pharmaceutic factories get rid of their DDT stock? That is anyone's guess!
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#6 2009-08-28 06:36:25
- jw
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- From: Kathmandu
- Registered: 2009-06-18
- Posts: 10
Re: Tips how to stay healthy when being in Nepal
Well, I think the advise I would be giving anyone coming to Nepal for a first time, not knowing anything about the conditions here would be kind of obvious to anyone living / being here for more then a week.
Regardless, my first and foremost advise would be to NOT DRINK THE TAP WATER.
Drinking tapwater will make you sick. Even the nepalese use special filter installations for cleaning tapwater, and then preferably boil it into tea before drinking it. In tap water you can find all the nastyness Grandpayeti was describing you could get from eating green leaf salads, and then some more.
Drinking bottled water is usually fine (check if the plastic seal around the cap hasn't been tampered with) for this has been treated, but really, DON'T DRINK THE TAP WATER ...
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#7 2009-09-29 20:08:21
- tintala
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- From: KTM
- Registered: 2009-09-29
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Re: Tips how to stay healthy when being in Nepal
Even if you dont drink the tap water you can still get sick, showring in the same water can find itslef into your body and still make you sick, how many times I have been bedridden without touching the tap. If you have been in Nepal for 2 months your body will beable to handle brushing your teeth with tap..
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#8 2009-10-24 17:13:59
- evalaviajera
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- From: traveler
- Registered: 2009-10-19
- Posts: 16
Re: Tips how to stay healthy when being in Nepal
Nepal is just wonderful! vaccinations are surely needed- no doubt about,but once you made them you can relax and leave your health in the hands of god- just enjoy.
Of course you should wash your hands, drink only mineral water and eat only in clean restaurants. I would highly recommend you not to eat meet at all but I'm a vegetarian you see...Enjoy Nepal, it is very special since it is very small and very high. Have a lovely journey 
Last edited by evalaviajera (2009-10-25 08:34:14)
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