Ok, I know I should not post this because I am going to be strung-up. And, yes I know that we should consult our pediatrician. Of course we will, but I know that there is a wealth of knowledge here so I though I should glean what I can from you all....

My wife and I have a last minute trip in the planning stages for the last two weeks in November. Our daughter will be about six months old. If we take this trip she will be coming along.

I believe this will be the height of malaria season in Zambia. I feel that we can keep he safe with Malarone, keeping her fully clothed, using mosquito coils, bed nets, deet, doom(bug bomb) and permethrhin. We will only be there ten days.

My questions are: is malarone the only choice for an 18 pound 6 month old, and what else would you be concerned about? Obviously I will make sure that she gets as many vaccinations as she can before then(she already has all the standard vacs a 3.5 MO would have).

She is breast feeding so I would think that would keep her safe from most food borne nasties. And mom will be extremely careful.

All constructive insights are appreciated.

JB

I know this is not what you want to hear, but I personally would not take a 6 month old baby on ANY airplane flight, even in the US.

Just too much chance of infectious diseases in airport crowds, and on the plane.

I would never take a young child to Africa.

Never.

Didnt you see what happened to the baby and mom in The Ghost and the Darkness?



No offense, but taking a six month old to Africa is the perhaps the height of selfishness. No vacation is worth such risk.

I wouldn't. If the baby gets a fever you have no choice but to evacuate from the bush. My 12 year old son got a fever and we had to fly him 3 hours to windhoek. Couldn't imagine a baby that can't communicate. Not to mention will you be satisfied with African health care? It isn't the same as what you get in the USA.

If you were going to South Africa maybe. But I would never take a child that young to any foreign country (except Canada). Africa, by and large, is made up of 3rd world countries and while the people are fine, adequate medical facilities are rare or non existent for the most part. It just wouldn't be worth the risk to me.

Thanks for the comments. Just to clarify, we wont be in the bush. Most likely we will spend the whole 10 days in Lusaka.


From a malaria standpoint Lusaka is probably worse than the bush.

And I do plan to have Medijet.

JB

I just went and asked my wife...

And she said "NOT NO...HELL NO".

I will not repeat what else she said.

You want to what? I would not even consider it. Never.

I don't want to derail my thread, but for further clarification, this is a trip to visit my wife's family. And as you can imagine they want to meet their granddaughter.

Of course, having had all of their children(including my wife) born and raised in Africa they think it is perfectly safe....

I am looking forward to hearing what our African members think.

quote:

Originally posted by JBrown:
I don't want to derail my thread, but for further clarification, this is a trip to visit my wife's family. And as you can imagine they want to meet their granddaughter.

Of course, having had all of their children(including my wife) born and raised in Africa they think it is perfectly safe....

I am looking forward to hearing what our African members think.

As I see it, you've got other, safer options. You could go at a safer time of year, stay home and have the grandparents come to you or meet them in a malaria free part of somewhere like SA.

Why take such an unnecessary risk when there are so many safer options that are all of relatively similar costs?

It shouldn't make any difference what the , Grandparents say. No, NO and HELL NO!!!

If the $$ is available for you to go there, have the Grandparents come here instead. Don't be foolish. A six month old is a fragile human being. Think H1N1 - pig flu - which may be on the verge of breaking out as a pandemic. Not to mention a change in everything from water to food. And I doubt you want to expose an infant to all those drugs you mentioned. Really, there are too many possible negatives to even consider this a good idea.

Thousands of babys get born in Africa every year. They are born to rich and poor, black and white.

Sensible precautions and making every effort to educate yourself about the risks are the best thing to do.

Of course you also run the risk of being mugged or T-Boned on the drive to the airport.

Try talking to or find someone who has recently had a baby in Zambia and see what they say.

Jason,

Suspect you are going no matter what. So go and make the best of it. One caveat, according to government health care, if a baby cries more than eight hours on a plane they must be ejected out the passenger door within the hour.

another Hell No!

jbrown .
aside from the flights , guess what ..there are lots of babies in lusaka and they dont all die ..

i have lived in africa my whole life apart from the last five years , is there a risk yes there is , do all the babies die , no .

i would not give the baby malarone , rather would just have a net and keep her from being bitten ...

your wife survived and her parents know what having a baby there is all about ....

you will be fine ..

on your first tpost i thought you wanted to take her into a camp and i would say HECK NO . to lusaka to visit family , family who live there and know and understand ...no worries

FWIW... My baby is two months old. She's been in Africa since day one.

And we live in a P. Falciparum area. And she's not on Malarone or anything else. Just sleeping under a mosquito net, like us.

And she's only got standard immunisation (polio, TB, etc.).

And she's doing fine, thank you...

Of course there are risks in Africa. And in Moscow. And in Washington, DC. But as someone pointed out above, millions of babies are born here every year, and grow up here.

Life is a risky business. Can't really hope to make it out alive... But I sincerely think that if you take just a few basic and common-sense precautions, everyone in your family is going to be just fine.

WHAAAAT !!!

Another BABY comming to Africa???
Please NO! We've got MILLIONS of them here already. Why do we need another one?


Siriusly! Just follow your peadiatritian's advice in terms of vacs & meds. get a reference & contact details of the best one (or at least the best GP) available in Lusaka, in the one in a million chance you need it. And come enjoy the trip........

I agree with the majority. I would not.

quote:

Originally posted by Use Enough Gun:
I agree with the majority. I would not.

+1

quote:

Originally posted by Will:
One caveat, according to government health care, if a baby cries more than eight hours on a plane they must be ejected out the passenger door within the hour.

Very complicated decision.
If you were going just to hunt then the answer would be NO!! But since you're going to visit family then the reasons are less selfish and somewhat worth the risk.

Having two small ones myself I can say that I would definitely take them to Africa but would at least wait until they were a year old or more if it was possible and not an emergency (ie. a grandparent in poor health that needs to meet the grandchild, etc.) The first 12 mos. are very tenuous and small babies get sick very quickly and can be more difficult to treat.

I'd wait until next year if at all possible.

Either way, good luck on the flight . Took my 2 year old across the pond (she'd been on planes at least 10 times at that point) and I would absolutely, definitely NOT recommend it....the Flight from HELLLL!!!! My wife and I almost killed each other, and I'm sure there were plenty of passengers that would have happily obliged, also.

Regards,
Scott

quote:

Originally posted by Code4:
Thousands of babys get born in Africa every year. They are born to rich and poor, black and white.

Sensible precautions and making every effort to educate yourself about the risks are the best thing to do.

Of course you also run the risk of being mugged or T-Boned on the drive to the airport.

+1

I realize that babies are born and raised in Africa every day without problems, but I think the fact that their parents were already there when they were born helps somewhat with the body's immune system (obviously not malaria). It is like people with severe allergies who boost their immune systems by eating honey only from their local areas. Also, what if (knock on wood) your wife is unable to breast feed for some reason? When my twins were on formula, one of them was really sensitive to what water was used to mix it and would have alot of tummy trouble. I'm talking about the difference between Huntsville and Dallas. Anywhere but our hometown, we had to use bottled water. Just an example of simple things that would be no biggie at home, but might be a biggie in Africa.

That being said, my opinion is that I think six months is too young and I know that if something happened and was made worse by my decision to make that trip, it would be really hard to get over.

I say if it is money and you have it, fly the grandparents over here for a week or two instead.

Good luck and if you decide to go, I hope you all have a great trip.

I would do it.

They bring the highest prices when they're very young.

I think waiting until she is older is a smarter idea, the grandparents can always come visit. It is a slight chance, but what if something happens to your child that will affect her for the rest of her life - you'll spend the rest of your life wishing you had waited to take her to Africa.

On a less serious note and as others have pointed out, that is a very long flight and will only be made worse for you and everyone on the plane if she cries.

Forget it. Abandon the plan

quote:

Originally posted by mrlexma:
I would do it.

They bring the highest prices when they're very young.

Funniest thing I have seen in long time.

I have two children that are born and bred in Southern africa, while we do not permanently live in a malaria area we do often travel to malaria areas and our children have been doing so since they were literally a few months old.

We do not give them malarone paediatric and even if you do want to, a 6 month old is not nearly heavy enough in body weight to take malarone. The precautions that you have mentioned are pretty much the best that you can do and the standard steps for having your kids in a malaria area We use a kiddy cream called no-squito that seems to have worked well.Bathrooms tend to be dark and are always a haven for mossies so we give them a good spray with doom, and behind curtain rails, they love to hide up there. If i were you i would make the trip, you seem fully aware of the risks and are well prepared in terms of all the necessary precautions.

The best advice i could give you is make sure that you have a doctor back home that knows how to treat malaria in kids, whether they are 6 months old or 5 years old it is a serious disease should they contract it and considering the fact that you have family in Lusaka this is probably not the last time you or your children are going to be exposed to malaria.....medjet is good to have but a good doctor in the USA will be equally as important as med evac from Africa

Another African vote for - go for it. No I would not give malerone. Sensible precations like spray the room before bed time and use a treated net stops 99% of malaria. Also, if you are not giving malerone then any fever can safely be assumed to be malaria and treatment started.

NB- over 95% of malaria infections are transmitted between 10pm and 4am (when kiddies should be safely under cover. )

Also...Lusaka is, like most African cities, a 'twin city'. In the slums malaria is endemic. In the low density suberbs, where people make an effort to control malaria it is minimal.

My son was born in Harare in January this year at the height of the cholera chrisis in the city. I even had folk talk of canceling hunts...We never saw a single case north of the railway line

My only concern would be the colds etc on the flight over.

Well, if things don't go well, I guess you could probably sell a jury on the insanity defense.

That's the only good thing I can think of regarding your idea for a fun family vacation.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by JBrown:

I feel that we can keep he safe with Malarone, keeping her fully clothed, using mosquito coils, bed nets, deet, doom(bug bomb) and permethrhin. We will only be there ten days.

Heck, I wouldn't worry about the mosquitos as much as poisoning her with all that stuff! j/k.

Some have said that many thousands of babies are born in Africa each year. What no one has said is that many babies die in Africa each year.
If it were my daughter, I would wait a year at least. And I would get Global Rescue, not MedJet. GR is definitely the better of the two.

It's a relatively easy decision to make, but a hard to one to take back.

Are you telling me you have no other option but to take a 6 month old baby on an airplane to Africa? That there is no other relative that she cannot be left with? You know, you can probably get away with this and everything will be fine. But can you live with your decision to take the child if something goes wrong?

Interesting stats...



NO & HELL NO:.....15 (USA 15)


YES:...............7 (AFRICA 4, OZ 1, EUROPE 1, US 1)


NO/YES/MITIGATED:..2 (AFRICA 1, USA 1)


100% of those saying No, Hell No, and Bloody Nell No are from the US.

All those saying Yes are from Africa or other places, with a single lonely 1 from the US.

Food for thought?

Look below:

The World Health Organization's ranking
of the world's health systems (source: WHO)


1 France
2 Italy
3 San Marino
4 Andorra
5 Malta
6 Singapore
7 Spain
8 Oman
9 Austria
10 Japan
11 Norway
12 Portugal
13 Monaco
14 Greece
15 Iceland
16 Luxembourg
17 Netherlands
18 United Kingdom
19 Ireland
20 Switzerland
21 Belgium
22 Colombia
23 Sweden
24 Cyprus
25 Germany
26 Saudi Arabia
27 United Arab Emirates
28 Israel
29 Morocco
30 Canada
31 Finland
32 Australia
33 Chile
34 Denmark
35 Dominica
36 Costa Rica
37 United States of America
38 Slovenia
39 Cuba
40 Brunei

The US are still far ahead of Zambia (No. 182).

More food for thought:

"Rankings of infant mortality rates (IMRs) are among the most commonly cited international comparisons of health status. The very low ranking of the United States--19th among industrialized countries in 1989 (Table 1)--is often used to question the quality of health care in the United States. The U.S. rate of infant mortality (defined as the number of deaths among children under 1 year of age, divided by the number of births in a given year, and multiplied by 1,000) was more than 50 percent higher than those of Japan, Finland, and Sweden. These statistics have helped to spur interest in bringing down the number of infant deaths in the United States. Despite improvements--including a drop in the rate from 9.7 in 1989 to 8.9 in 1991--there is still a long way to go to bring U.S. rates in line with those of other countries." Today's US stats have slightly improved but the ranking remains the same (others have improved too...).


Now, things in various countries are not always as rosy as what their citizens are led to believe...

quote:

Originally posted by Will:
according to government health care, if a baby cries more than eight hours on a plane they must be ejected out the passenger door within the hour.

Will A+ as always. Truth be told, our little angle has not cried for eight hours total in the three months since she was born. She had even began sleeping through the night when she was only two weeks old. We are blessed.

Thanks to everyone who offered advice. I think NE 450 no.2 set the tone for the American point of view.


I would like to extend an extra thanks to Ivan, JohnHunt, Shakari, Phlip A., Mr. Palos, Scott, Al, gotogirl3, and Don Heath for going above and beyond with outstanding advice. For the most part I believe I can keep her from getting bit entirely. My wife and I spent three months in Zambia, Namibia, and Tanzania last year and had very few bites. And the few we had came about when we let our guard down. In the 8 months that I have spent in Africa I have had zero bites when using deet and long clothes/bed-net.

I started this thread hoping to get some good advice outside of the malaria worry. You all gave me food for thought.

This trip came about because this November may be the last chance we have to go for the next couple of years. I am going to do what I can to move it up to next year.

I agree with those who think it is risky, but there is about a 90% chance that we will be living over there within the next 5 years. This is our first child and I am fairly certain that we will have our next child while living there.

A few of your posts reminded me of what Wendy Kann wrote about her doctor's reaction when she told him that she wanted to get her childeren's vaccinations up to date because she was taking them to see her family in Africa. She thought her Doc was going to call CPS.


My daughter was very excited when I told her that we might take her to meet her grandparents:



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But then I read her a few of your posts:




Thanks again,

Philip

Thanks for posting that. I have poured over all those numbers.

The infant mortality rate is ten times higher in Zambia(1 in 10) than the US(1 in 100).

I a nutshell, health wise, the US is low among first world countries and Zambia is low among third world countries. No matter how you look at it, they are worlds apart.

From the American response you would think we have the safest country in the world.

Most Americans are surprised to learn that the US is rated pretty poorly for traveler safety.

What a beautiful baby!

In my humble opinion private health care in Johannesburg is right up there with the best in the world and Joburg is at a maximum 2 hours from Lusaka in an emergency situation. My brother in law is a specialist surgeon based in joburg and he has young kids, and he loves the bush....if you need a back up plan and want numbers of paeds etc let me know and i will happily make a plan for you. I also have a friend who manages main camp at Mala Mala and his 2 girls have been in the bush since they were 2 weeks old, in the past he gave us the number of the Doctor based at Skukuza to get advice on the kids going into malaria areas, i still have it if you want it. Many children are born and raised in Skukuza and the doc their deals with malaria on a regular basis.

There are certain areas that we will not take our kids to,namely parts of mozambique but i am sure that you guys are not being irresponsible in any way in the trip that you are planning. Have fun and enjoy the blessing of your daughter

Very interesting stats. They seem to duplicate in any post on African Travel.

Philip, those are interesting stats and can (like all stats) be used to argue the "for" and the "against" case

What the stats cannot say, but was said by Don; "Also...Lusaka is, like most African cities, a 'twin city'. In the slums malaria is endemic. In the low density suberbs, where people make an effort to control malaria it is minimal."

This explains that the infant mortality is not because of your geographic location, but your absolute circumstances. You cannot compare a healthy child, born to parents who ahve not smoked or boozed during pregnancy or arround her, who has received optimal health care, top notch nutrition, is always warm, cosy & loved and without congenital or inherited issues such as HIV etc. to the masses of babies born in slums, gutters, boxes, shacks & ditches throughout the third world.

In fact, in America your little girl is pretty average. When she lands in Lusaka she will be part of the elite 1%! I don't think she is just a potential statistic......