2004 - Typhoid and Cholera and Malaria, Oh My!

In preparation for my trip, I logged on to the Center for Disease Control's Travel Destination Site.

Living in such an antiseptic society here in the US, we often not aware or just forget the fact that diseases still run rampant in most areas of the world. According to the World Heath Oranization, the group with the highest mortality rate, for the year 2000, within the Nicaraguan population were children between the ages of 0-4. Contrast that with the USA for 2000, our highest mortality rated group was 80 years and over!

So armed with my travel itinerary, I set off for the Travel Clinic at Kaiser to receive inoculations and medications for diseases such as Hepatitis, Typhoid, Tetanus-diphtheria, and Malaria. My mom has foregone taking additional medications for Malaria (although her shots are up to date), I guess she figures at age 79 there's not much else that could put her down - Go Mom!



Although we will be spending the majority of our time in the city of Leon, we will be traveling out to the villages of Villa Soberana and La Palmerita to visit with the people and assist with the outreach programs in these communities. If you would like more information on the specific programs established for these two communities, you can click on the name of each village above and you will be redirected to the specific page on the Mercy Ships Nicaragua website.