WHAT IT TAKES TO SET UP TRAVEL HEALTH SERVICES: A REVIEW FROM COUNTRIES WITH ESTABLISHED SERVICE

As air travelling now becomes cheaper and available to almost all people of any walk of life, travelling across international borders is fast becoming a lifestyle of many. Having travel health service as part of health care services is important to address the issues of travel related illnesses among travellers. However, lacks of published guidelines pertaining to travel health service rendering many countries to overlook its importance. The aim of this paper is to review published literatures and authoritative websites on the components needed to develop guideline to establish travel health services. A systematic literature search was done using pre-specified keywords for literatures published between years 2000 – 2016. Literatures written in English and fully accessible were all included. No exclusion criteria was set before the search. Online authoritative websites pertaining to travel health were also referred. A total of six literatures ranging from expert opinion, review paper and original study, together with three authoritative websites related to travel health were reviewed. Among the important components needed to be considered for developing the guideline for establishing travel health services are to prioritise pre-travel health service, to set up specialised travel health clinic, to produce travel health/medicine specialist, to emphasize on continuous education and training of the practitioners and to apply multiagency and multidisciplinary approach with adequate fund for research in travel health. As a conclusion, policy makers should prioritise and select the most important components in developing guideline for travel health service.