A leading professor has called on travel agents to take responsibility for educating travellers about the risk of contracting malaria abroad.
Infectious disease specialist Professor Stephen Green of the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield, said agents have an important role to play in informing the public about malaria.
There were 1,500 reported cases of malaria in 2007. He said: “Unless high street travel agencies and internet travel companies take on additional responsibility for providing advice, the public probably won’t get any useful information at all.“
He was speaking following the publication of a letter in the British Medical Journal in which infectious disease experts said operators and airlines should be doing more to educatetravellers about malaria and the need to take preventative medication.
They called on tour operators to review their procedures, and for ABTA and IATA to provide guidance on malaria. The authors reviewed 27 travel brochures from British tour companies who sell holidays to Africa and found only 12 contained any information about malaria. However, they were unwilling to name the companies involved.
An ABTA spokeswoman said its code of conduct and the Package Travel Regulations say members are only obliged to informclients of compulsory health requirements.
“It is a dangerous game for travel agents to give medical advice on malaria, as it changes all the time. The best advice is for people to visit their GP before travelling,” she said.
Andy Cooper, director-general of the Federation of Tour Operators, a sub-committee of ABTA, said he was surprised by the findings and the accusations against tour operators. “This doesn’t bear any relation to my experience,” he said. “This is a matter of concern and I will be writing to the authors to investigate the report further.”