1,2 Three recent developments in travel medicine regarding children merit discussion: (1) the increase screening assay in the number of articles whose main focus is children, as illustrated in this issue of the Journal of Travel Medicine (JTM);3–5 (2) the launching of a Pediatric Interest Group within the International

Society of Travel Medicine (ISTM);6 and (3) the results of an informal survey of ISTM members showing that most of the responders are “less than comfortable” in caring for young children.7 Articles such as the ones in this issue of JTM will help practitioners feel more comfortable in dealing with children, both pre- and post-travel. Virtually all travel medicine practitioners, regardless of their primary speciality and areas of interest—and find more whether they welcome it or not—are frequently

confronted with pediatric-related issues.7 They see children in their offices as part of families going overseas. Parents are taking their children on work assignments in remote areas of the world, on pleasure trips to high altitude destinations, on safaris, or back to the country where the parents, and sometimes the children, were born. Teenagers visit developing countries on work projects and university students spend school semesters studying overseas. Travel medicine is a unique speciality, one that goes against general trends in medicine. The separation of medicine into well-defined specialities is well established. And these specialities are splintering further into ever more sub-entities. As an example, within pediatrics, there are pediatric neuro-ophthalmologists. While such specialized care is essential in tetracosactide certain circumstances, it narrows the focus of the care away from the person as a whole and is time consuming, expensive, and generally impersonal. Such divisions need not and should not be the rule in travel medicine. The ISTM membership is comprised

of individuals from numerous medical specialities as well as nurses, pharmacists, and others. Its focus is and should continue to be on travelers and their interaction with the environments they are planning to visit—or have recently exited with travel-related health issues. This makes the “travel” part of travel medicine as important as the “medicine” part, and occasionally more so. For example, in most countries, virtually any medical practitioner and many pharmacists and nurses can obtain a yellow fever vaccine permit, look up the lower age limits and contraindications for giving it, and check maps/tables for the countries where the disease currently exists. But only practitioners with travel medicine backgrounds are likely to know the nuances of the “travel” part of travel medicine such as knowing whether vaccination is necessary as a condition of entry into a country or only for visits to remote areas.