cheap drugs
Stocking up on pills and vaccines is a real eye-opener toward the rape of us innocent Europeans by pharmatechs out to make a quick buck.
A case in point is my incipient requirement for anti-malarials, in this case, Malarone. In the United Kingdom, £35 to £40 for a box of twelve one-per-day tablets. On the continent proper, they get off a little easier at €45. When the nurse told me this, I told her exactly who the drugs were produced by.
"How did you know it was GSK?"
"Oh, just a wild guess" - Glaxo charge the earth and the moon in the UK. I'd like to think that it's because they need to offset the reduced costs of their products in countries where people haven't the means to pay sky-high prices, but that's really not true.
So rather than pay over £120 for the course I require, I paid £32 in total.
By buying Malarone in Kuala Lumpur.
Six recommended vaccinations, £7.50 total. Great, hit me - all done and dusted.
Japanese Encephalitis B, £140 pounds on its own, and rabies only slightly less. I'll import them too, thank you very much.
If it wasn't illegal to import medicines and prophylactics on a commercial scale, I'd have my career path sorted once and for all.
Even already knowing your itinerary, I'm finding the arithmetic a touch confusing -- just how long are you in the danger zone? (Of course "over £120" sets no upper limit, so it could be forever, but let's hope not.)
Oh yes: welcome to 2007. Glad you finally made it. And congratulations on the spring clean :)
Mmm, thank you, and thanks for your feedback when you first noticed :)
You never were very good at maths. It's about right - Palawan itself will be about 15 days, not to mention other southern locales that all add up to about a month. The rest of the 3 months are lower risk, so I'll take standard precautions sans prophylaxis.