I've said it before, but that won't stop me saying it again: there's a dearth of reliable medical information for globetrotting families. The new edition of Dr Richard Dawood's Travellers' Health (Oxford University Press, £14.99) is an excellent, if disconcerting, guide to everything from motion sickness to mischievous bowels. But in its 700- plus pages (read it before you go, or it will devour your luggage allowance), only 14 are dedicated to children abroad.
I've only come across one book whose every page is specifically aimed at kids. Doctors Wilson-Howarth and Ellis's Your Child's Health Abroad: A Manual for Travelling Parents (Bradt, £8.95) delivers exactly what its title promises.
Wilson-Howarth has travelled extensively with her own three sons, making family treks to Nepal when one was only a few months old. Her sound advice is health-related in the broadest sense, including the best way for a young baby to travel for all of your comfort, to sterilisation and sunhats.
It covers pregnancy, through breastfeeding on the move, to adolescence; there isn't a single parent who won't learn something new (if unpleasant) about their offspring's insides once they've read it. She even has detailed descriptions of "normal poo", so any deviations can be easily spotted by parents.
The Rough Guide to Travel Health scores lowest of all on the children-to-adult health information ratio - eight pages out of over 500. It also scores highest on the scare quotient. Whereas Wilson-Howarth derides exaggerated tales of sudden death by snake bite, the Rough Guide warns that, for toddlers, "hazards lurk around every corner" and that scorpion fatalities most commonly occur in the under twos.
Lonely Planet's Travel with Children has a less terrifying chapter on health, including the handy tip to take the sick bags from your flight for possible use in the hire car, something I wish I'd read and heeded earlier. It could have saved the cost of expensive valeting.
