Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
persists for more than 72 hours or is accompanied by fever, shaking chills or severe abdominal pain, you should seek
medical attention.
Yellow Fever
Although not a problem in Mauritius, Réunion or the Seychelles, travellers should still carry a certificate as evidence of
vaccination if they have recently been in an infected country. For a list of these countries visit the
World Health Or-
ganization
(
www.who.int/en
) website or the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(
www.cdc.gov
) website. A
traveller without a legally required, up-to-date certificate may be vaccinated and detained in isolation at the port of ar-
rival for up to 10 days or possibly repatriated.
Diving Health & Safety
Health Requirements
Officially, a doctor should check you over before you do a course, and fill out a form full of diving health questions. In
practice, most dive schools will let you dive or do a course if you complete a medical questionnaire, but the check-up is
still a good idea. This is especially so if you have any problem at all with your breathing, ears or sinuses. If you are an
asthmatic, have any other chronic breathing difficulties or any inner-ear problems, you shouldn't do any scuba diving.
A simple medical certificate is compulsory for diving in Réunion (but not for introductory dives). You can get one
from your doctor in your home country or have it emailed to the dive centre. Otherwise, you can get one from any doc-
tor in Réunion.
Decompression Sickness
This is a very serious condition - usually, though not always, associated with diver error. The most common symptoms
are unusual fatigue or weakness; skin itch; pain in the arms, legs (joints or mid-limbs) or torso; dizziness and vertigo;
local numbness, tingling or paralysis; and shortness of breath.
The most common causes of decompression sickness (or the 'bends' as it is commonly known) are diving too deep,
staying at depth for too long or ascending too quickly. This results in nitrogen coming out of solution in the blood and
forming bubbles, most commonly in the bones and particularly in the joints or in weak spots such as healed fractured
sites.
Avoid flying after diving, as it causes nitrogen to come out of blood even faster than it would at sea level.
The only treatment for decompression sickness is to put the patient into a recompression chamber. There are recom-
pression chambers in Mauritius, Réunion and Seychelles.
Insurance
In addition to normal travel insurance, it's a very good idea to take out specific diving cover, which will pay for evacu-
ation to a recompression facility and the cost of hyperbaric treatment in a chamber.
Divers Alert Network
(DAN;
www.diversalertnetwork.org
)
is a nonprofit diving-safety organisation. It provides a policy that covers evacuation and
recompression.
