Preparing young travellers for low resource destinations

#### Summary points Increasing numbers of young adults travel to developing regions for leisure and social projects. Illness—mainly self limiting gastrointestinal or respiratory syndromes—is reported in three quarters of all such travellers.1 2 3 4 Adverse health events occur more often in young travellers than in older ones, and these are associated with basic living conditions, longer duration of travel, and risk taking behaviours.3 5 Road traffic crashes and injury while swimming also cause an excess number of deaths.6 Although extensive data are available on prevention of infectious diseases, data are lacking on accident prevention and behaviour modification to reduce health risks. Most research has focused on travellers of all ages, so extrapolation is needed to provide information on the subgroup of younger people. Healthcare professionals are often consulted about pre-travel issues, and this review aims to provide them with published evidence and expert opinion on the major health problems that affect young people travelling to developing countries. It will also provide a framework for performing a travel health risk assessment. #### Sources and selection criteria In this specialty, data come from population surveys, retrospective reviews, and cross sectional or cohort studies, often limited to a single centre or destination,7 and less often from large randomised controlled trials. We searched PubMed using combinations of words including young, youth, student, elective, volunteer, travel, traveller, health, …