News Archives |
Volume 4 No 25; 25 June 2010
Revised Yellow Book for travel health professionals
A revised edition of Health Information for Overseas Travel, known as the UK “Yellow Book” guide for travel health professionals, has been published by the National Travel Health Network and Centre (NaTHNaC) [1].
The book provides comprehensive information and advice for health professionals, including sections on: risk assessment and risk management in the pre-travel consultation; guidance on “special risk travellers” (ie those with special health needs or who are going on challenging itineraries); algorithms for medically managing returned travellers; and a wide listing of other resources.
Whereas the previous, 2001 edition was organised according to risks associated with particular destinations (countries, continents, etc), the new edition is primarily organised around generic risk assessment and risk management principles – the largest section comprises an extensive disease guide – and is intended to complement the country-specific information and news about global health events that is updated on a daily basis on the NaTHNaC website.
NaTHNaC, established in 2002, is commissioned by the Health Protection Agency and hosted by University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. It provides evidence-based advice and guidance for health professionals and travellers in the UK and country-specific health information linked to a searchable database of global disease outbreaks, as well as a wide variety of health information sheets on infectious and non-infectious travel-related health risks. It also operates a programme of registration, training, standards and audit for 3,500 Yellow Fever Vaccination Centres in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Reference
1. Health information for overseas travel: prevention of illness in travellers from the UK (ISBN: 978-0 9565792-0-1), 400 pp, £19.95 from the NaTHNaC website: http://www.nathnac.org/pro/index.htm.
Mobile phone base station study publication
A new study looking at the patterns of early childhood cancers across Great Britain has found no association between a mother living near to a mobile phone base station during her pregnancy and the risk of that child developing cancer before reaching the age of five.
The study, published on bmj.com [1], is the first to look at the health effects of mobile phone base stations in Great Britain as a whole, and is the largest of its kind.
Researchers from Imperial College London looked at almost 7,000 children and explored whether there was any correlation between a mother’s residence and childrens' risk of cancer.
The researchers identified 1,397 British children aged 0-4 years, who were registered with leukaemia or a tumour in the brain or central nervous system between 1999 and 2001.
The researchers compared data on how close the children's birth addresses were to a mobile phone base station, with the same data on children selected as controls. For each child with cancer, four healthy children who shared the same gender and birth date were chosen at random to act as controls.
The patterns that they identified revealed that the children with cancer are no more likely to have a birth address near a base station than those who do not have cancer. The estimated radio frequency exposures to mobile phone base stations were similar for the mothers of children with cancer and the children acting as controls.
Reference
1. Elliott P, Toldeano MB, Bennett J, Beale L, de Hoogh K, Best N and Briggs DJ. “Mobile phone base stations and early childhood cancers: case-control study”, BMJ 2010; 340: c3077.