Expedition Medicine—Recommendations from Experience in Guatemala

Abstract

The increasing number of field expeditions studying or working abroad each year is currently unparalleled by medical research efforts or data from which health professionals can make meaningful recommendations about how to keep personnel in the field healthy. The medical planning, organizing, and data are presented from a geology expedition to Guatemala involving 25 persons. Only minor medical problems were encountered, and less than 1% of the total person days at risk were lost due to illness. Eight guidelines are presented as a tool to assist any health professional in the planning and preparing of a team for the field.