Whether you are traveling for your holiday vacation or a business meeting, the experience is always exciting. First, traveling opens a door for you to meet new people while enjoying the beautiful sceneries that your destination has to offer. While traveling may be exciting, there are challenges along the way.
More often than not, travelers have lost essential luggage during the trip, and that ends up ruining their entire journey. Losing medication, for example, is one challenge that is always complicated.
The complication is because your prescription may require a daily dosage, and the worst may happen if your medication isn’t available in the country or area you are visiting. So, what should you do if you find yourself in this situation?
Without saying much, here are ways you can handle lost medication when traveling, as shared by a professional.
1Report the Matter to the Police
Reporting the issue to the police station is the first thing you should do the moment you realize that you have lost your medication. Whether small or big, reporting the incident is non-negotiable. During travel, there are insurance covers to cater for the risks, involved along the way.
Some of the perils covered include loss of luggage, and medication is one of them. Therefore, if you have travel insurance, your first response should be to report the issue to the police station. The abstract you get from the police can be used as evidence while filing a claim with your travel insurance agent.
2Talk to Your Insurance Agent
After reporting the loss of your medication to the police, among the first persons, you should contact your insurance agent. Why, the agent first, you may ask? Well, if you searched for your insurance company over the internet using their URL, you will learn there are different travel packages in the store.
For instance, most companies do have packages that can cater for emergency prescriptions if you forget or lose your medication during your travel. By calling your insurance, therefore, it will help make the search a bit easier. The company can as well refer you to specific medical personnel, thus making the entire operation smooth.
3Find a New Doctor
Often, many people assume that you can easily access any drug you want from a pharmacy, with or without a prescription. The truth is that it’s unethical for a pharmacist to issue you with medication without a doctor’s prescription. Therefore, if you lose your medication during your trip, among the first things you should do is visit a local doctor.
Remember, most pharmacies may not acknowledge your old prescriptions. Therefore, the best you can do is have one written by the local doctor. You only need to tell your doctor about your condition and the type of medications that you were previously on.
You can consult with your home doctor for the prescription. The doctor in the foreign country may prescribe the same dosages, or even issue an alternative remedy, if the drugs you were on, are rare to find.
4Get the Medication Using the Prescription Given
After consulting with a doctor in a foreign country, the chances are that he or she will issue you with a prescription that you need to present to a pharmacist. Having a local prescription ensures that you get your medication with fewer hustles.
However, when picking a pharmacy to buy from, it would help if you considered working with a legit store in the new area. Therefore, you can ask around for referrals to avoid acquiring fake drugs.
5Give your Embassy or Consulate a Call
In some instances, you might find it hard to get in touch with your travel insurance or local doctor. So, how should you go about this dilemma? Your Embassy or consulate should be the first people to call when in need of replacing drug replacement services.
Your Embassy should assist you in getting the necessary prescriptions by referring you to the right places in the new area.
6Ask Your Home Doctor to Ship the Medication Your Way
There are some instances when you may not be able to secure your medicines in a foreign country. If that’s your case, then your only remaining option is to have your home doctor ship the medicines to you.
The idea may sound tiring, but if it’s the only remaining option, there is nothing you can do. The shipping may take some time based on the channel used. However, it’s worth the wait if you desperately need the medication.
How Do You Prepare for the Loss of Medication While Traveling
1. Talk to your Pharmacist Before Traveling
Days before your travel, it would help if you held a talk with your pharmacist, telling him or her about your plans to move. The pharmacist can then tell you if your medication is available in the country you are going to.
Besides, he or she can tell you if the medication over there is different from the one you are on. With this kind of info, you can easily prepare for the worst by bringing an extra dosage during the trip.
2. Bring your Doctor’s Notes
As said earlier, finding your medication in the places you are visiting requires a local prescription.
When it comes to acquiring the local prescriptions, it will help if you brought with you the notes from your previous doctor. With your previous doctor’s notes, your current doctor can quickly write a prescription.
3. Know the Generic Medications You Can Use
Often, there are instances when finding the exact drug that you were on can prove challenging.
However, with the help of your previous doctor, you can have an idea of the generic drugs that you can consider if you lost the one already issued.
4. Hand-Carry Your Medication
Often, medication gets lost together with your checked bags. Therefore, you must consider packing like a professional when traveling. Whether you are using air, bus, or train, it would help if you packed your prescription medication in the carry-on bag. The bag should be near you all the time, which means that there will be fewer chances of losing drugs.
Losing prescribed medication while traveling is a pain in the neck. You are never sure of where to begin. Luckily, for you, this article has everything covered on what you are supposed to do if you found yourself in the situation.
The article goes further to explain how you can prepare for the loss of your medication. By reading through the entire piece, it will help you understand how it’s easy to deal with the loss, like a professional.
