DebConf12/HealthCare

Vaccinations

You may need some vaccinations if you are visiting Nicaragua.

• Recommended (by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
  • Hepatitis A (virus spread through contaminated food and water)
  • Hepatitis B (virus spread by infected blood, needles, and sexual contact)
  • Immune Globulin (IG) [what exactly is being recommended here?]
  • Typhoid (bacterial disease spread through contaminated food and water)
• Special cases
  • Yellow Fever (virus spread by mosquito bites): a vaccination certificate is required for entry to Nicaragua if you travel from a country where Yellow Fever is endemic.

• Health advice for travel to Nicaragua

Recommendations

The following measures are recommended for best protection:

• Food
  • Make sure it was safely prepared
• Water
  • Do not drink tap water
• Mosquitos
  • Avoid mosquito bites
    • Use repellent, mosquito nets, etc.

Hospitals

• In case of an emergency, individuals are taken by the emergency medical services to the nearest hospital that will accept a patient, usually a public hospital. Public hospitals provide free medical care, but the conditions are poor compared to other parts of the world. The hospitals are clean, but medication may not be available and has to be purchased outside the hospital in local drugstores.
• U.S. health insurance plans are generally not accepted in Nicaragua. Foreigners are given the same treatment as locals in public hospitals. Preference treatment can be given if you pay for it (ie. private room with air conditioning, instead of bed in large room together with other patients).

• Hospital Militar (Close to the venue and hotels. Public and private service available).
• Hospital Vivian Pellas (Might be the best private hospital in the city).

• Public hospitals will not charge you for emergency services, but you may have to pay for medication and supplies if they're not available.
• While there are private ambulances, the majority of the emergency medical services are provided by the Red Cross and the Volunteer Fire Department.

Fevers

Malaria

• Malaria is endemic to Nicaragua. Ways to prevent malaria includes:
  • Taking a prescription antimalarial drug in case you leave the urban areas.
  • Using insect repellent and wearing long pants and sleeves to prevent mosquito bites.
  • Sleeping in air-conditioned or well-screened rooms or using bednets.
  • Note that some malaria medication can have serious side-effects.

• Malaria risk map "Malaria risk is present throughout the year, in a number of municipalities: Chinandega, Leon, Managua, Matagalpa, Regions Autonoma del Atlantico Norte and Sur. Low to no risk in the city of Managua." (NHS Scotland)
• Besides specific geographical patterns, generally for malaria there is a lower risk in cities than in the countryside, and there is a greater risk near standing water.
• General malaria advice for high-risk areas

Dengue

• Dengue fever is endemic to Nicaragua, especially on the Atlantic coast.
  • Currently, no vaccine is available to prevent it
  • The best prevention measures are:
    • using insect repellant containing DEET;
    • wearing protective clothing;
    • using bed-nets to prevent mosquito bites.
• General dengue fever advice

(This needs to be re-formulated with regards to: risk pertinence and specific counter-measures. Also: is Dengue fever recoverable?) (Normally recoverable, but there can be severe complications, which are more likely to happen at a second infection with Dengue. There is an other repellent named icaridin, which is less effective than DEET, but also less poisonous.)

Water

• Tap water
  • Usually contains chlorine (up to you to decide whether you want to drink it or not). Water in urban areas (specially Managua) is drinkable, but can cause stomach problems if you're not used to the high levels of chlorine in the water.
  • If you are drinking it we'd recommend you to wait a few minutes so that chlorine would go away.
  • In the better hotels and restaurants, purified water is often provided. Bottled purified water is widely available in stores and supermarkets, including the conference hotels and main venue.
• Bottled water
  • Widely available throughout Nicaragua, even in the smallest towns.
• Availability
  • Water is generally abundant in Nicaragua during the raining season, but there can be shortages during the dry season.
  • There can be outages because of distribution issues. The better hotels and restaurants often have water storage tanks, but others do not offer this service and it can therefore happen that there is no water for a couple hours a day, especially outside the bigger cities.
  • During winter (rain season), outages are very rare. Water outages during the conference time is very unlikely.