Humans are great at travelling; British people will make around 100 million trips abroad this year, most of them between May and October. But humans are poor at assessing risks. On those trips, the vast majority of us will return with nothing but happy memories. However, sadly, recent history suggests around 5,000 of those UK citizens will die.
Each fatality is a tragedy – all the more so, if it is avoidable. As the main summer season begins, I want to focus on the three key threats: the road, the water and the mosquito. Act appropriately on each, and you will dramatically improve the survival odds in your favour.
Thailand is a useful exemplar. This enticing and exciting destination will attract around one million British visitors in 2025. Like most other nations, Thailand is much more dangerous than the UK. The main threats facing British travellers to this tropical gem are road accidents and drownings; diseases transmitted by mosquitoes also pose a risk.
Yet the Foreign Office’s “Safety and security” travel advice for Thailand begins arbitrarily with terrorism, warning: “There is a high threat of terrorist attack globally affecting UK interests and British nationals.”
Even if the UK government won’t help travellers focus on the biggest dangers, you should. So please read on to learn what you can do about them.
Road accidents
“By the time you have read this page, at least five people will have died in road traffic crashes” – so says Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organisation, at the start of the latest Global Status Report on Road Safety. Someone dies in a road accident every 26 seconds, on average. “Mobility must not, and need not, come with a tragic cost in human lives,” he adds.
For the visitor, rail and air travel are statistically far safer than self-driving or (even riskier) riding a motor scooter. Thailand, with a population roughly the same as the UK, is once again a good example. The death toll on the roads is 15 times higher than in Britain. Two out of three of the fatalities involve riders and passengers of motorcycles and three-wheeled tuk-tuks. About the riskiest activity for any young backpacker: renting a motorbike, particularly after drinking.
Accidents in water
The average bather swims at around 2mph. That happens to be the typical speed of rip currents, which sadly claim lives every summer. These strong currents constitute the deadliest beach threat. Typically, swimmers will feel themselves dragged out to sea. They try to swim back, but become exhausted in the process and tragically drown.
Dr Steve Ray, former lifeboatman, says: “Sometimes a rip can occur with little or no warning. If you get caught in one, don’t panic. A swimmer of limited ability should ride with the current and swim parallel to the beach for 30 or 40 yards, then swim to shore on a perpendicular course.
“Strong swimmers should swim at a 45-degree angle across the rip, and in the same direction as the prevailing side current.”
He adds a word about the chill factor in the UK and other temperate waters: “The human body temperature is 37C. British beaches are not. At the onset of shivering, leave the water. Children are particularly susceptible to hypothermia.
“Some swimmers think vigorous exercise is the way to stay warm, but exercise in water cooler than 24C accelerates the fall in body temperature. If you swim with an elevated blood-alcohol level – anything up to 20 hours since your last drink – hypothermia is a bigger risk.”
And drinking before swimming is also daft.
Mosquito bites
“The mosquito is the deadliest animal known to man,” writes Dr Jane Wilson-Howarth, the author of the authoritative Staying Healthy When You Travel. This bloodsucking insect transmits malaria, which kills 600,000 people a year according to the World Health Organisation. Children in Africa are at particular risk, and travellers die from the disease, too.
Dr Wilson-Howarth writes: “You don’t have to get bitten. Defend yourself with an effective repellent, especially if bites make you miserable or if you are in a region where insect-borne disease is a real risk.
“Malarious mosquitoes feed on blood and bite from dusk until dawn (inclusive), although different mosquito species have different preferences; some are midnight biters, while others are most active at the beginning and end of the night.
“In the tropics and subtropics, arm yourself against the dusk assault and the twilight double shift when mosquitoes that spread dengue and yellow fever and bite during daylight hours are active, but so are the night-biters.”
