For Immediate Release in the Ridgefield Press and Redding Pilot

By:  Amy Bondeson, Coordinator of Community Programs, Ridgefield VNA

Contact:  Sandy Weinberg, RN, BSN, Director of Community Programs, Ridgefield VNA

Ridgefield VNA Services to Include New Travel Clinic

Traveling to exciting new places and seeing unforgettable sights can make you feel wonderfully alive.  Travel can be relaxing and enriching and can be a great way to recharge your batteries.  Due to a global marketplace, many business people are sent overseas for a length of time.  According to Abinash Virk, M.D., Director of the Travel and Geographic Medicine Clinic at the Mayo Clinic, “It’s becoming easier to travel about anywhere in the world.   As a result, more people are picking up rare and exotic diseases that you wouldn’t expect to see in the United States.”

The World Health Organization advises travelers to consult a travel medicine clinic or personal physician 4-6 weeks before departure if the travel destination is one where exposure to vaccine-preventable diseases may occur.  Travel medicine is highly specialized and the information is changing daily.  Where can a traveler go to get the most accurate and up to date information and immunizations?  It used to be that area residents had to travel to Danbury or Norwalk to get this type of care.  This is no longer the case!  The Ridgefield Visiting Nurse Association is opening a travel clinic at their office at 90 East Ridge. 

The Ridgefield VNA’s travel clinic will offer a complete pre-trip consultation utilizing state of the art software that will generate a traveler health report.  This report is tailored to each traveler based on the traveler’s answers to an in depth questionnaire.  The report not only includes immunization recommendations, but an entire profile on the country to which you are traveling.  The report includes information on other health issues (insect, food and water-borne diseases), weather concerns, crime and terrorism and basic preventative measures for avoiding these possible problems. 

Fifteen different adult immunizations will be available, as well as prescriptions for malaria pre-exposure medication and TB testing.  The traveler health report will determine which immunizations are recommended, the traveler will be given information on each vaccine and will be able to ask any questions he or she might have.  The traveler will be able to make an informed decision on which vaccines to receive. 

The Ridgefield VNA’s travel clinic is open to any traveler over the age of 18 years.  If you want to make an appointment for a pre-trip consultation or have any other questions regarding travel health, please call 438-5555 extension 1117 to speak to Sandy Weinberg, RN, BSN, Director of Community Programs.