[Pre-travel advice and patient education of Hungarian travellers]

According to international surveys, over half of the travellers face some kind of health issue when travelling. The overwhelming majority of travel-related illnesses can be prevented with pre-travel medical consultations, but the syllabus and content of the consultation have to match the travel habits and culture of the given society.

This publication explores the specificities and travel habits of Hungarian travellers.

One hundred participants of a travel exhibition completed a survey about their international travel. As the survey was not representative, the data could only be processed through simple statistical methods. However, since the exhibition was presumably attended by those wishing to travel, the conclusions drawn from the results are worth publishing, since no similar survey in Hungary has been published before.

Based on the suitable classification of age groups in travel medicine, 11% of the participants were adolescents / young adults (aged 15-24), 81% adults (25-59) and 8% elderly (60-74). Twenty-eight percent of the participants travel multiple times a year, 40% yearly and 32% of them less frequently; 16% of the adults, 8% of the adolescents and 4% of the elderly age group travel multiple times a year.

The travel destinations of Hungarian travellers have remained practically unchanged since a study was conducted 13 years ago: the vast majority (95%) travelled within Europe, 2% to the United States, and 11% of them elsewhere. Since Hungarians do not travel to endemic areas, only 5% consulted their general practitioners (GPs) prior to travelling, and 29% did when they had to be vaccinated. Forty-two percent of those wishing to travel never consult their GPs, even though 29% of them are aware of some chronic illness. Instead, 51% gather their health information from the internet and only 6% from their doctors. By the contradiction between the poor health status of the majority of Hungarian travellers and the negligence of seeking pre-travel advice, our survey clearly points out the importance of the propagation of doctor's advice before trips, even if the travellers visit exclusively non-endemic countries like the European Union. Orv Hetil. 2018; 159(9): 357-362.