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The business traveller’s toolkit

by Mifi Purvis

Travel in the Time of H1N1

“I haven’t had many problems,” says Brent McKeage, a sonar caliper technician from Edmonton who generally stays healthy on his frequent business trips to South America. “But I sat beside a lady once who was sniffling and coughing during a flight and – guess what – three days later, I was sniffling and coughing.” He doesn’t normally get a seasonal flu shot, but that experience and the current flu pandemic have led McKeage, a consultant to Louisiana-based Sonarwire Inc., to get an H1N1 flu shot this year. “I just can’t afford to be laid up,” he says.

Once on the plane, there’s little a traveller can do to avoid germs. An alcohol-based sanitizer (remember the airlines’ 100-millilitre max for carry-on liquids and gels) will clean your hands, but it won’t stop you from inhaling viruses circulating on microscopic airborne water droplets. Paper masks favoured by some travellers won’t filter germs and don’t provide a seal around your mouth and nose. In other ways they may cause more harm than good.

“If people are anxious already, the sight of someone in a surgical mask can increase that,” says Julie Rowney, director for international management at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business. Rowney travels frequently on business. She has noticed that airports are stepping up health checks of passengers. “In Taiwan, I was stopped at a couple of gates where attendants asked me several health questions,” she says. In Quito, Ecuador, she had to fill out a health questionnaire.

If some companies are recommending a knuckle bump or polite bow instead of a handshake once the business traveller arrives, the behaviour is rarely in evidence at a business function. “I was in Quito when we heard that French President Sarkozy suggested a no-kiss policy [amongst healthy people], and my Latin American colleagues laughed,” Rowney says. The multiple-kiss greeting is as common in South America as it is in France. She adds that it’s always polite to decline a kiss or handshake if you are ill.

Other customs are affected by the year’s health concerns. Frequent business travellers to Korea will notice a marked decline this year in the elaborate glass-sharing drinking rituals seen at many business dinners, according to Won-il Chung, a commercial director at the Alberta Korea office in Seoul. “H1N1 has been a serious issue in Korea with more than 15,000 people infected,” he says. “This certainly has changed the social drinking scene.”

Of course, there are scarier dangers abroad. Rowney is obliged to contact the department of risk management and insurance at the University of Calgary before she travels. Among other things, the department advises travellers and can insure them against catastrophic injury, kidnap or other crime. (Alberta insurers such as MHK provide corporate kidnap and ransom insurance.) Rowney registers travel plans with the local Canadian or American embassy at her destination. She advises common sense when travelling; listen to your hosts about safe destinations and activities.

Catastrophe notwithstanding, both Rowney and McKeage agree that a good way to safeguard health while you’re abroad is to take care of yourself as a matter of routine.

“But I do take a little pharmacy with me when I travel,” McKeague says. He packs such items as antihistamines, anti-nausea meds and a broad-spectrum antibiotic. His best health safeguard? Language. “I speak Portuguese now, and I’m learning Spanish,” he says. “It’s easier to take care of yourself if you can talk to people, make yourself understood.”

December 2009 Contents

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