How risky is living abroad? The short answer is a simple one, it depends.
Shotgun Shack, a blogger on expat issues writes, “You can’t call yourself a real Expat Aid Worker until you’ve suffered and lived to tell about your experience with a tropical disease or parasite that you don’t hear about much in your home country.” He then went on to rank appropriate maladies and horrific experiences based on their level of shock value.
Expat stories about surviving awful accidents or incredible illnesses do make for a lot of attention-getting at parties. Nevertheless, going through such ordeals hardly seems worth it, especially when the consequences can last a life-time.
How risky is living abroad? The long answer is, it depends primarily on the country but also the area of the country, the lifestyle of the expat, and many other factors. Expats’ personalities and life experiences allow many of them to roll with the punches, to accept the unexpected and deal with unusual situations. These same qualities often make expats reluctant to seek medical help so when it comes to communicable diseases, knowing what to watch for helps.
Symptoms of Communicable Diseases and Illnesses Prevalent in Developing Countries
Awareness of symptoms associated with a particular illness or disease allows expats to seek medical care more quickly and more appropriately. The following listing of symptoms provides a snapshot of complaints associated with specific illnesses:
- Encephalitis or Meningitis – fever and severe headache with stiff neck and vomiting; rash; seizures
- Food poisoning – Severe diarrhea (frequent, loose bowel movements) lasting two or more days, vomiting for more than 24 hours, dehydration, stomach pain
- Fungal infection – Persistent itching with cracked, scaly, peeling or blistered areas of skin, white patches in the mouth that look like cottage cheese
- Hepatitis – Fatigue, nausea, fever, sore muscles, headaches and stomach pain
- Malaria – High fever, headache, chills, stomach cramps, coughing, and diarrhea leading to delirium
- Polio – Fever, headache, fatigue, muscle aches and spasms, neck/back pain or stiffness, vomiting
- Rabies – Redness or swelling, fever, itching, headache, insomnia, confusion, anxiety, agitation
- Silicosis/Silica Dust Exposure – Chronic dry cough, shortness of breath with exercise
- Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) – Unusual discharge from penis or vagina; burning with urination; sores, redness or growths on genitalia; swollen lymph nodes with fever, weight loss, diarrhea and cough
- Tuberculosis – A bad cough that lasts longer than three weeks, fatigue, coughing up blood, unexplained weight loss, fever, chills, night sweats
Unfortunately, exposure to exotic illnesses doesn’t always happen during normal daily life. Sometimes unusual circumstances are forced on all of the people living in a certain area. During a natural disaster – earthquake, flood, flu epidemic, hurricane, tsunami, volcano eruption – expats get caught up in the same deadly situations as the natives. Although survival is a great motivator, polluted air and water, contaminated food supplies, and stressful conditions impair the body's immune system.
Symptoms That Can be Life-threatening
Seek medical attention promptly for the following symptoms:
- blood in urine or feces; stools are black or look like tar
- chest pain or pressure with sweating, shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting, or dizziness
- cough lasting three weeks especially with bloody, yellow, green, or rusty-colored mucus
- fever of 101° Fahrenheit or 38.3° Celsius for more than three days
- infection indicated by pain, redness, warmth or swelling; red streaks from a wound; pus; fever
- itching – lasting more than a few days, especially when severe at night
- lymph nodes that are swollen, red, firm or painful
- rash with fever and joint pain; with sore throat; with infection; lasting more than two weeks
- sore throat lasting more than two weeks
- vomit with blood or what looks like coffee grounds
- yellowing of skin and whites of eyes
Limited space prevents this list from being comprehensive but these symptoms should not be ignored or treated with over the counter medicines. Additional information about many infectious diseases can be found on the Internet.
It's difficult for expats to decide which conditions warrant seeing a doctor and how urgent to consider specific symptoms. Self diagnosis and over the counter treatments can be especially risky for expats even when communicating with medical experts elsewhere. Seeing a doctor "in-country" may be helpful because physicians "back home" may have trouble diagnosing unfamiliar diseases without seeing the patient.
Expat Medical Treatment in China provides additional information that expats can use in deciding what kind of treatment to seek.
Source:
Mettler, Molly and Donald W. Kemper, Healthwise for Life A Medical Self-Care Guide for You, 7th Ed. Boise, ID: Healthwise, 2003-2009.
Mistie Shaw - Writing for nearly half a century, Shaw's interests and education meander from music to the military, and from faith to fun.
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