So, of course, location can really change your level of risk.
There are some countries where encountering
diarrheal pathogens are going to be fairly low, places like the United States,
Canada, Western Europe, you're usually pretty safe and
normal exposure that you would expect to find here in the United States.
There are countries that are especially high risk.
And these include places like most countries in Asia,
the Middle East, Africa, Mexico, Central and South America.
And then there are obviously countries in between.
So, my husband and I, when we were living in Togo,
we would often see people with Gatorade or oral rehydration solution on their desk,
and that's how you knew who was suffering at the moment.
And at any given time, 20,
30% of the office had something like that sitting on their desk.
When we lived in Indonesia, it was a totally different story.
Even though it's a fairly high risk country still,
people weren't consistently suffering from diarrheal diseases.
So really, it depends on where you are and what you're being exposed to.
So what can you do to minimize your risk while you're living abroad, and
having these great experiences, and building your resume, and
really learning the trade of public health?
Well, first and foremost, let's talk about water.
A good rule of thumb is to always drink bottled water, or
water that's been boiled and treated with iodine or chlorine.
I find that drinking bottled water is definitely safer than treating it, but
there are options for treating.
One of the things that people forget about a lot is that adding ice to that bottled
water is really detrimental to the safety of that bottled water.
Normally, ice is made with tap water, which of course,
carries a really high risk for contamination.
The other thing that people don't think about or
consider sometimes is things like tooth brushing, contact lens cleaning.
You're going to want to think about using bottled water for these tasks as well.
Not everybody does, but I certainly suffered from less diarrheal episodes than
my husband did and I used bottled water for my tooth brushing and he did not.
So, just food for thought.
A warning about bottled water.
So over the years of living and working overseas,
my husband and I found some really interesting things going on.
We would go to buy bottled water, and we would find that the water seemed like it
was in a good bottle, labeled, it looked sealed, but if you looked really closely,
some of the children who were selling these bottles of water had taken a match
to the seal and had melted it back together in key places so
that it appeared sealed and it was just refilled with tap water.
So, that's sort of something that you really want to make sure that it's
actually really sealed, and it's not opened or hasn't been resealed.
And we encountered that in multiple countries, so just to put it out there.
Other beverages that you're going to want to think about,
you're going to want to avoid unpasteurized dairy products, so
milk directly from the farm so to speak.
You also want to avoid fresh fruit juices.
These can carry high risk.
Some things that you can feel pretty good about though are bottled sodas, hot tea,
coffee, beer, wine.
All of these things are usually pretty safe.
When you do, though, open a bottle or
can of something that you feel like should be pretty safe to drink,
do remember to clean off the outside of the bottle or the can before drinking it.
Because all of that dirt and possible fecal contamination could be waiting for
you to ingest on the outside of that can or bottle.
