Dr. Stuart Rose has long had a passion for travel medicine, literally writing the book on the subject and providing information and products to keep people healthy and safe overseas. Now he’s expanded his business, opening a clinic in Northampton where he offers all that, but also medical services such as vaccinations and prescriptions. The clinic meets a need, he said, because no one wants to come home sick — or worse.

Dengue fever is no fun.

Spread by mosquitos, it’s characterized by sudden onset of fever, intense headaches, joint and muscle pain, pain behind the eyes, nausea, gastrointestinal disturbances, rashes, and sometimes gum and nose bleeding. Recovery may be followed by prolonged fatigue and depression. Occasionally, it may progress to dengue hemorrhagic fever, marked by bleeding and shock, and leading to death.

Not a pretty picture, is it? Yet, it’s something that travelers to South and Central America and Southeast Asia want to be aware of if they’re heading to those regions during the rainy season. In Sri Lanka alone, the disease has affected 10,000 people this year and claimed almost 200 lives.

But that’s just one of many diseases incubating around the world. Traveling to Kenya? You might want to be aware of a cholera outbreak that has claimed 55 lives. And H1N1? Well, that’s … everywhere.

In fact, no matter where they’re going, vacationers would be well-served by checking out www.travmed.com, the online clearinghouse of international health data that Dr. Stuart Rose has spent decades assembling.

They may also want to pay him a visit before hopping that plane, now that he’s opened the Travel Medicine Center of Western Mass. in Northampton, where he’s able to distribute not only information and retail products aimed at keeping travelers safe, but also vaccinations and prescriptions.

“As many as 70% of travelers report an illness or impairment when traveling abroad,” Rose said. “Many of the illnesses associated with traveling out of the county, such as malaria, hepatitis and even travelers’ diarrhea, are preventable. It’s important to help reduce some of the risks by doing your homework ahead of time.”

Rose should know; he literally wrote the book on travel medicine, first publishing the International Health Travel Guide in 1989 and updating it annually in print form for more than a decade before moving the information to the Web, where it’s easily updated when government health officials uncover another outbreak overseas.

He has long used the Internet to sell health-related items for travelers as well, from sterile needle and suture kits to products that relieve burns, stings, and bites; from rehydration packets in case of diarrhea to iodine tablets to treat water. Now, by opening his headquarters on Pleasant Street to the public as a retail store and clinic, he has finally become a full-service resource for travelers.

All three components — information, products, and medical treatment — are critical, he explained. Take malaria, for example. “It’s not just pills, it’s prevention. You have to buy insect repellent, mosquito netting, water filters … all the hardware of travel, the gadgets you need to prevent insect bites. We’re sending people overseas with protection. They need shots and pills, but also information and products to prevent bites and clean the water.”

International Appeal

Rose, an emergency doctor who currently works as an attending physician in Noble Hospital’s ER, has long made travel medicine a sort of second career — one he said he cultivated early on.

“Right out of medical school [in 1965], I did a tropical medicine elective and spent a couple of months in Tanzania, working in these bush hospitals with the Masai, getting exposed to infectious diseases of an exotic nature, things you hardly ever see in the States. I thought it was really fascinating, and got me more interested in tropical medicine and travel medicine.”

Later, serving as an internist with the Army Medical Corps, he developed an interest in emergency medicine, which became his calling. But when travel health clinics began popping up a quarter-century ago, he knew he had something to offer.

“The whole field of travel medicine started in the 1980s,” he said. “It had to do partly with the era of globalization, people traveling to the far corners of the earth, and the rise of adventure travel. People are traveling to China now, to Vietnam, to many lesser-developed locations that weren’t always open to travelers. And then travel clothing, boots, Gore-Tex — these products and services started coming together to make it possible for people to travel farther and to more exotic, dangerous places than ever.

“All these things supported the development of the travel-medicine specialty,” he continued. “And I rode this wave” — by distributing information and selling products related to staying healthy while traveling.

“Say you’re going to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro,” he said, opening up his Web site and making a few clicks. “There’s a whole thing here on altitude illness. Then let’s say you have some medical problems, and you want to know what hospitals are available. Here’s a list of hospitals and their Web sites in most capitals in the world.”

The products he sells go far beyond supermarket bug spray and aspirin. “The biggest product we sell is Ultrathon, which is the insect repellent that the Army uses. Combined with the right clothing, it’s 100% protection.” Then there’s the Traveler-ER, a flash drive loaded with a vacationer’s health information. “If you’re wiped out overseas, a doctor can stick it into a computer and bring up your medical history online.”

The clinical side of his business is key because some countries require travelers to be immunized. Certain countries in Africa, for instance, require a yellow-fever shot just to gain entry, while others recommend precautions against hepatitis and typhoid fever, to name a couple of examples.

And travelers who come to the clinic for any type of service are often given a copy of Rose’s Travel Health Companion, an 84-page booklet packed with general information ranging from water and food advice to what insects are most dangerous; from dealing with heat-, cold-, and motion-related sickness to precautions about accidents, swimming, even crime in faraway destinations.

“People going to lesser-developed countries are exposed to various diseases and need protection,” he said. “I’ve researched what those risk factors are, from insect bites and malaria to various forms of diarrhea from contaminated food and water, or wading in water.”

Becoming a Destination

Rose said a service like his is especially important in a region with the demographics of Western Mass.

“People around here are travelers, they’re educated people,” he said, noting that many students and faculty at the area’s colleges hail from overseas or spend significant time there. “So I think we’re well-positioned, even though we’re not in a large, metropolitan area.”

He also expects to see overflow from the travel-health services of area hospitals as word gets out about what the Travel Medicine Center offers. As for Rose, he enjoys this side of his career for what it is not — that is, a medical field in which he’s not seeing people at their worst.

“It’s a nice balance,” he said. “In the ER, I’m confronted with sick and dying patients, but here, they’re healthy and happy, and they’re getting ready to have a good time.”

Which, of course, will be an even better time if they don’t return home with dengue fever.

Joseph Bednar can be reached

at bednar@businesswest.com