Q&A with Travel Health Pharmacist Carlene Oleksyn Home / Expert Health Resources / Q&A with Travel Health Pharmacist Carlene Oleksyn

Carlene Oleksyn has been Director of the Travel Clinic in Stony Plain for the past 6 years.  She received her certificate from the International Society of Travel Medicine in 2015 and started practicing in travel health to meet a need in her community.

There was no local travel clinic offering immunization and health services to those travelling internationally, meaning most people had to travel into downtown Edmonton to public health if they wanted travel health services such as vaccination.

As a direct result of this barrier and inconvenience in accessing travel health advice, Carlene had begun to notice that many travellers were not receiving pre-travel vaccines and education before their trip, which held many dangerous implications such as when a traveller had become infected quite seriously with malaria and almost lost his life to the disease.

A: A travel health pharmacist spends time with a traveller before their trip to go over all the health related risks associated with their upcoming trip, providing them with the key information they need to have to decide for themselves what type of protection they need and want prior to travel.

Most people tend to think of travel health as only involving vaccines and medications, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, the information and education discussed during a travel health consultation are equally as important as it allows a traveller to make their own educated and informed decisions about how they want to protect themselves during their actual trip.

Our role really is to ensure as much as possible our travellers remain healthy while travelling so their trip is not interrupted with unexpected illness, and to also avoid serious diseases that could impact their health once they return home.

What piece of travel health advice often comes as the greatest surprise to your patients?

A: The risk of rabies when travelling is something that almost all our travellers are surprised about.  Rabies is 100% fatal to humans, and learning how to prevent it and what to do if possibly exposed is critical to the traveller.  Health care in many countries around the world is not equipped to handle such an emergency as a dog or monkey bite. We make sure travellers have a plan in place in case of a life-threatening exposure.

A: Ideally we like to see travellers at least a month before travelling.

This allows us to ensure any boosters if vaccines can be completed.  However, even travellers leaving with very short notice benefit immensely from a travel consultation as some vaccines and medications can be started even the day before getting on the plane!