Another Mashup that might interest the more paranoid adventurer. This one maps
disease outbreaks around the world with data from organizations such as the International Society for Infectious Diseases, the World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
This is certainly a site that should carry a health warning for hypochondriacs but it is great for travel professionals who want to impress their colleagues by dropping a comment during social chat; "Four cases of human anthrax were found recently in Mongolia" or "Hantavirus infections have increased considerably in Germany since the beginning of the year".
The site is a mine of information about all sorts of viruses and bacterium that most of us don't get to hear about; look up 'humans infected with Cowpox after contact with cats'. However, thankfully most of us will never come across these nasties on our travels. No, I didn't mean cats! Happy traveling.
Labels: health, map, warning, World
During the 2008 Olympics, avoid drinking tap water outside the Olympic Village. That is the message in a recent
article by Stephen Wade, of Associated Press. It seems that few of the 15 million residents of Beijing drink water from the tap, which is known to be contaminated, relying instead on bottled water.
It reminds me of a trip to Moscow some years back when a similar warning was issued to us. The warning pointed out that it was easy to inadvertently drink the tap water by putting ice in drinks or even eating washed salad. The upside was that we got to clean our teeth using Vodka!
Labels: Beijing, health, Olympic Games, safety, warning, water
