Caution: travel is hazardous for children who are not fully immunized. And it doesn’t matter who is doing the traveling – your child or perfect strangers. • Example: Last month, a woman with a communicable case of measles traveled by air from London to New Mexico, stopping at airports in Baltimore, Denver, and Albuquerque. Similar [...]

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Tags: Air Travel, aircraft, chickenpox, contagious viral disease, immunized, Malaria, measles, measles autism wakefield, new vaccines, pertussis, polio, quarantine, rubella, Travel, travel-related diseases, traveling overseas, vaccinating children, vaccine-preventable diseases, Venice, whooping cough

Remind children about “freeze” before taking trips, visiting amusements parks, and outings in rural areas. Remind them of what?  Yes. Freeze. This is a game in which children run about until a designated caller yells, “Freeze!” The children stop in their tracks (freeze) and remain in that place until the caller gives the all-clear signal [...]

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Tags: amusmement parks, becoming separated, child id tags, child lost, child safety, electronic surveillance kids, elevator safety, freeze, how to prepare children for trips, hug a tree, kids safety, kids safety tips, kids travel tips, lost child, report lost children, retrace steps, tips for not getting lost, what to do if your child is lost

When your family gathers for Thanksgiving Day, use the opportunity to gather information about the health of all your relatives. Such information may help improve your own health, that of your children, and that of unborn generation. In the U.S, the Surgeon General has declared Thanksgiving Day as National Family Health Day. However, any family [...]

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Tags: biological relatives, cancer, children, cholesterol, Diabetes, family history, genes, genetics, heart disease, hypertension, My Family Health Portrait, national family health day, relatives, Thanksgiving health

A frequent dose of sunshine is the right tonic to keep your kids hale and hearty if you reside where winters are long and the days short. Here is what you should know: 1. Sunlight helps minimize being sad and having SAD.  Sad (small letters) is having the “winter blues.”  SAD (capital letters) stands for [...]

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Tags: antidepressant medication, artificial light, children, counseling, cranky, depression, Dr. Karl Neumann, Forest Hills Pediatrics, Health, kids, Kids Travel Doc, kids travel doctor, mental health, pediatrician, SAD, safety, seasonal affective disorder, sunlight, winter blues

Backpacks here. Backpacks there. Backpacks practically everywhere. Kids of all ages wear them – and, increasingly, so do adults. Toddlers wear them for the sake of wearing them, often empty and sometimes in the shape of cartoon characters. Older kids use them for books and sporting equipment and when hiking and traveling. For high school [...]

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Tags: backpack etiquette, backpack kids, backpacks, body weight, bodyweight, children, heavy backpacks, kids, shoulder straps, sporting equipment, Toddlers, waist strap

Skip your hot tea and coffee when flying with young children – and hope that passengers in adjacent seats do the same. Every year hundreds of passengers, many of them children, are burned by such beverages spilling on them. The combination of hot drinks, crowding, turbulence, and children is a formula for an accident waiting [...]

Posted in Air Travel, Food & Water Precautions, Prevention, Safe & Healthy Travel, Travel No Comments »
Tags: Air Travel, aisle seats, children, coffee burn, coffee spill, hazards, hot beverages, hot coffee, hot tea, injuries, overhead bins, turbulence

Recently a four-week old infant died on a flight from Washington to Kuwait. The probable cause was the mother accidentally smothered the baby when the mother fell asleep while nursing her infant. This tragic event does not mean that nursing is unsafe during air travel. As far as is known this is the first time [...]

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Tags: Air Travel, air travel with infants, breast-feed, breastfeeding, co-sleeping, Dr. Karl Neumann, Dr. Neumann, Forest Hills Pediatrics, health and safety, infant death, Kids Travel Doc, kids travel doctor, Kuwait flight, nursing, pediatric advice, pre-flight examination, smothered

Ask pediatricians whether infants and young children can travel by air with ear infections and the likely answer is, no, they cannot. Ask pediatricians if they have ever seen a child with serious ear issues resulting from air travel and the likely answer is, no, they have not.  There is virtually nothing in the medical [...]

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Tags: Air Travel, Ear infections, ear problems, ear problems air travel, flight, Infants, pediatric travel advice, safe to travel, travel safety, young children

When children complain of ear discomfort in the summertime, chances are that they have swimmer’s ear, a condition important for you, the parent, to recognize. Early treatment can save you from a few days of having a very unhappy child on your hands and, perhaps, from having to seek medical care and all the hassle [...]

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Tags: backyard pools, bathing caps, canal opening, chlorinated swimming pools, ear discomfort, ear drainage, ear drops, ear infection, ear wax, earache, eardrum, earlobe, fungi, hot tubs, medical care, muffled hearing. bacteria, non-chlorinated, oral antibiotics, outer ear canal, recreational water, salt water, skin lining the outer ear canal, swimmers earplugs, swimmer’s ear, whirlpools

Are your children’s vaccinations up-to-date before traveling by air? According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in the past year alone there were more than 3,000 known airline passengers traveling while ill with a contagious disease.   1. The aircraft cabin environment abets the spread of disease-causing microorganisms. Infected passengers cough up, sneeze out [...]

Posted in Destinations, Prevention, Safe & Healthy Travel, Travel, Vaccinations No Comments »
Tags: air travel children, air travel infants, aircraft cabin, CDC, chickenpox, contagious, disease-causing organisms, diseases transmitted, flu epidemics, ill passengers, ill travelers, in flight, infectious illness, influenza vaccination, measles, medical staff, microorganisms, mumps, passengers traveling with disease, pertussis, spreading disease, symptomatic, traveling with infants, typhoid, unvaccinated children, unvaccinated visitors, vaccinated children, vaccination children, vaccine-preventable, yellow fever