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"Each time I go abroad to Nepal, Vietnam, India, even Thailand or Colombia, I get sick. Diarrhoea, heat stroke and general malaise strike ruthlessly, despite the care I take over water, food, sleep and sun. On one occasion I ended up in an Indian hospital, on an intravenous drip, for three days."

That is no ordinary traveller's story. It is an account by Miranda Haines, one editor of The Traveller's Healthbook, which is published this week by the travellers' club Wexas, price pounds 9.99.

The other editor, Sarah Thorowgood, tells of sunburn after an overnight drive to the Algarve: "I promptly fell asleep on the then already warm sand until about four in the afternoon ... Quite apart from feeling that I could probably radiate enough heat for an entire Mediterranean holiday season, it became quite exceptionally difficult and painful to sit down. Then the blisters came, followed by great lumps of skin that fell off my back for the next two weeks."

Fortunately, the book contains remedies for these and many other complaints.

Wexas is at http://www.fco.gov.uk/

You can access the latest Foreign Office advice to a range of countries on http://www.fco.gov.uk/