Let's face it — as balmier temperatures near, taking the kids on warm weather trips is as much a bonus for you as it is for them. If nothing else, it's an escape from the ennui of everyday life, and who wouldn't love that? It's little wonder, then, that we sometimes forget about the most crucial part of having fun in the tropics: staying healthy, especially in the face of a slew of infectious diseases. Dr. Shaun Morris gives us some tips on how to do just that.

Doctor, what are some of the major culprits we’re looking at here?

There are common things to catch and there are bad things to catch, and where you go in the world and the kind of travel you do can alter your risk for these things. The most common things you can catch are diarrheal illnesses, respiratory illnesses or skin infections. Usually those aren’t the severe things. Severe things would be malaria or typhoid or certain kinds of meningitis or other kinds of infections that you get from exposure to animals, like rabies … or yellow fever, the classic tropical infections. The risks for the first group? Those exist pretty much anywhere [in the world]. [For] the other group, it’s geographically specific for what you may be at risk for.

Are there certain ills our kids are particularly vulnerable to contracting?

There’s not a lot of data that’s specific to children who travel, but the data that does exist does suggest that they’re at a higher risk for those common things, like diarrhea, respiratory illnesses and skin infections, and, I mean, the same would hold true for here as well. Kids are more likely to get an acute bout of diarrhea than a 35-year-old adult woman, just because theyre not as careful with what they’re eating, etc.

Can you list some of the standard vaccines folks take before they fly? 

The first thing would be to make sure the child is up to date on routine immunizations. That’s the most important thing.… In terms of travel-specific vaccines, I think it’s quite specific to where you go in the world. Some you’d want to think about would be hepatitis A, a fairly common one that’s usually transmitted in water and ice cubes and things, so you don’t need any unusual exposure [since] it’s not blood borne or sexually transmitted. For certain parts of the world [the] typhoid [vaccine] is an incredibly important vaccine, particularly in South Asia.… That’s one of the parts of the world where there’s a significantly high risk of acquiring typhoid, and there’s a vaccine that can prevent that. Influenza is one that a lot of people don’t think about as being a travel-related vaccine.… When you travel, you tend to be around a lot of people. [You’re] taking transports, eating at restaurants, and there’s just more exposure. It’s an important vaccine people should have before they fly, but they often don’t. And there are some countries where you legally have to have taken a certain vaccine.

Really? Can you give me some examples?

So yellow fever is a virus that’s transmitted by the bite of a certain species of mosquito, and it can be a very severe illness. There are countries that have the mosquito but not the virus, and then there are other countries that have the virus and the mosquito. So, if you are a country that has the mosquito but not the virus, what you want to avoid is someone coming into your country with yellow fever in their blood, getting bitten by one of your local mosquitos then introducing the virus to the local population. So if you’re travelling directly from Canada, it’s usually not an issue. If, for example, you’re travelling from Brazil to an African country … then it becomes an issue. [For] the countries that require it, there’s actually a WHO [World Health Organization] official certificate that you need to be carrying, since yellow fever vaccines can only be given in clinics or settings that have official certification.

Are there any diseases that take a long time to exhibit symptoms? It would be pretty unfortunate if I caught something somewhere but didn’t know till months later.

There are some species of malaria that can do that. Of the two most common kinds, the really bad one that kills many people is called Plasmodium falciparum, and that one tends to present a short period of time after getting bitten. There’s another one called Plasmodium vivax, which tends to not be as severe, and you’re less likely to die from it. But … it can [also] present months after the fact or even, in rare cases, a year after the fact.