Child Travellers Count

The World Tourism Organization estimates that in 2013 tourism will continue growing and that in 2020 there will be 1.6 billion international trips taken. In 2011, there were 13.3 million trips taken abroad in Spain. There are very few figures for the number of international trips taken by Spanish children, but it is known that they form about 10% of travellers, a similar percentage to that found in US studies. Furthermore, during the last decade the immigrant population of Spain has grown, increasing the number of families returning to their home country to visit friends and relations. Although children make up a significant proportion of international travellers there is little information on pre-travel medicine for this group. The aim of this article is to describe the particularities of general advice, vaccination recommendations and malaria prevention for child international travellers, with the purpose of both infectious and non-infectious disease prevention.