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David R. Shlim, Carolyn S. Langer, Are Expedition Medical Kits Too Dangerous to Carry?, Journal of Travel Medicine, Volume 19, Issue 4, 1 July 2012, Pages 205–206, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1708-8305.2012.00614.x
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If you were to accompany a month‐long expedition into a remote area as a trip physician, you would want to have with you an assortment of medications that would be useful in case of illness or trauma among the expedition members. 1 Your position as a licensed physician would justify the use of prescription medications.
If the same adventure travel company were to run the trip without a physician along, should all the medications be left at home? Surprisingly, that's the advice that some adventure travel companies have received from their legal advisors. The thinking seems to be that if you do not have medication, you cannot harm anyone with an adverse drug reaction, or a wrong diagnosis, ignoring the uncomfortable reality that if you do not have medication along it's possible that someone could die, or suffer irreparable harm.
The fact that bringing along a group medical kit has even been questioned has largely flown under the radar of the travel medicine world. That is why a study by Pattenden and colleagues 2 in this issue of the Journal of Travel Medicine appropriately highlights an important concern. The authors showed that half of British companies taking clients to remote high altitude destinations did not bring basic drugs to prevent or treat altitude illness. The study did not inquire about other important drugs, but they did discover that several of the companies did not carry group drugs because of fear of liability.
