European vacation?
Hooves, mouths and mad cows.
Traveling to Europe should elicit images of fountains, plazas, towers and peaks.
So why is everyone talking about cows?
Two diseases one that rarely affects humans and another that poses no danger to us have become the big news out of Europe.
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also called mad cow disease, hit the scene first. Although the details continue to elude researchers, what's clear is that a variant of the disease has crossed species to affect humans. So far, there have been more than 90 confirmed cases in Britain of the always-fatal new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD).
Lately, the focus has turned to foot-and-mouth disease. It doesn't infect humans, but we can certainly transmit it, and the results can be devastating to cattle and sheep.
What does this mean for people traveling to Europe this summer? There may be closures and restrictions at some towns and attractions due to the highly infectious nature of foot-and-mouth disease. Beyond potential
inconvenience, through, meat-eaters and everyone else have no need to panic.
"Does the risk of mad cow disease warrant becoming vegetarians? Not yet, here or abroad," says Gary Fujimoto, M.D., medical director of Mills-Peninsula's Travel Medicine Program. "I've heard people say they are not going to eat meat while traveling in Europe, but that's not necessary."
Fujimoto points out that while millions of Europeans eat beef, relatively few have become infected with vCJD. "I think there's a lot more we need to know," he said. "It's not highly transmissible."
For the cautious, Dr. Fujimoto said, a reasonable step would be to avoid organ meat–such as brains, heart and liver–which is where the disease tends to concentrate. Of course, meat should always be cooked
sufficiently before being consumed.
As for foot-and-mouth disease, travel restrictions have nothing to do with a risk of human infection.
"People are losing sight of the fact that this is not a human disease," Dr. Fujimoto said. "Still, we really don't want to bring it in to the country, just like we don't want to bring the Medfly into California."
To find out more about health concerns and international travel, call the Travel Clinic at (650) 696-5838 or check the Web site at www.mills-peninsula.org/travel.