Health guide wants you safe, not sorry
Story by : MEGAN SMITH, of the Guadalajara Reporter
Mexico: Health and Safety Travel Guide.
MedToGo, 2007 (2nd ed.)
Robert H. Page, MD
and Curtis P. Page, MD
640pgs
Most Mexico travel guides concentrate on breathtaking scenery and cultural monuments, paying only lip service to health and safety concerns. MedToGo’s Mexico: Health and Safety Travel Guide. does just the opposite.
Part Physician’s Desk Reference, part local yellow pages, part public service announcement – the Mexico: Health and Safety Travel Guide. has established itself as the neurotic’s bible, and a trusty tome to keep on hand for the rest of us. With the recent publication of a second edition, MedToGo seeks to strengthen their stranglehold on the market for well-prepared, slightly paranoid travelers.
The guide includes helpful, if somewhat generic information about everything from preparing for travel in Mexico, to symptoms and treatment options for diseases travelers might experience there. Particularly helpful is the pharmaceutical guide, listing generic names for common drugs in Mexico, what they’re used to treat, their side effects and precautions.
Though primarily geared toward travelers, MedToGo aims to serve long-term foreign residents as well. The guide has a 20-page section weighing the pros and cons of private insurance options and an explanation of how, and whether, to apply for IMSS. The Lakeside section compares residential care facilities.
However, it is extensive regional listings of recommended hospitals and specialists that make the guidebook exceptional.
Hospitals are chosen and scored on the quality their facilities, readiness to handle the full spectrum of patient needs with modern equipment and the competency of their staff. Two hospitals in Guadalajara, San Javier and del Carmen, received perfect scores, with Hotel Bernadette ranked closely behind. The guide gives full descriptions of each hospital it recommends, from the brands of the x-ray machines to the bed-side manner of the nursing staff. Listings include maps and driving directions to the hospitals.
MedToGo is adamant their individual physician recommendations are based on rigorous research and interviews, never solicitations by doctors. But extraordinary achievement in their specialization isn’t enough to be a MedToGo recommended doctor. In order to merit a recommendation, all physicians are interviewed in English to establish their fluency.
The same 11 doctors recommended in Guadalajara and Lakeside for the first edition were chosen again for the second edition. Each listing includes a photo and biography of the physician, their office information and cellular phone numbers, standard fees, and whether they will make house calls.
If you’re looking for home remedies for the myriad aliments that bedevil the average adventurous soul in Mexico, MedToGo will let you down. The guidebook plays it safe. There aren’t any recipes for cold relief or venomous bites using herbs from you garden – no wisdom of the curanderos here. If you’re stung by an alacran, MedToGo says you should take an antihistamine and get to a doctor for the anti-venom shot.
The second edition focuses more than the first on region-specific health and safety concerns, such as a new warning about hotel-doctor fraud in Cancun. But if you own the first edition of the Mexico: Health and Safety Travel Guide., there is nothing in the second edition that merits the 25-dollar cost of updating.
For those that don’t own the guidebook, this is a worthwhile investment for some peace of mind. It is a guidebook that you can skim through and stash away on a bookshelf to gather dust, waiting for those occasions (may they by few!) that you’ll be really glad to have it around.
