Buying travel drugs online, how safe?

February 23, 2008 11:52 AM

I'll be on the road traveling for a few months so I visited a travel clinic and was prescribed Doxycycline and Ciprofloxacin for malaria and diarrhea, respectively. My question: is it safe to purchase these drugs online (Canadian pharmacy) and if so which sites would you guys recommend?
posted by parttimeninja to health & fitness (5 answers total)

Since these are non-brand name antibiotics (generics), hundreds of pharmaceutical companies manufacture them. Companies like Mylan, Barr, and many others make them, and they're pretty difficult to botch up (from a reputable generic house). As for a reputable online pharmacy from Canada, I can't help you there. I'd say don't buy them if they were brand name meds.
posted by lonemantis at 12:18 PM on February 23, 2008

Slightly off topic, but I recommend bringing along chewable Pepto Bismol tablets instead of Immodium AD in conjunction with Cipro for diarrhea. My doctor recommended Immodium and Cipro, but the problem with the Immodium is that it just stops you up for a while. Pepto hardens your stools but doesn't prevent you from going entirely so you still go and get all of the junk out of your system while the Cipro kills off what's making you sick. I found if I started taking the pepto tabs as soon as I started feeling intestinal distress I was okay. YMMV, I'm not a doctor, just a fellow traveler.
posted by the_W at 12:58 PM on February 23, 2008

If you're just worried about cost, check out your local pharmacies first. If you're in the Midwest, Meijer stores have the Cipro for free (Meijer) and several other pharmacies are following suit with, if not free, low cost (~$4) antibiotics. Call around!
posted by schwab at 7:08 PM on February 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

Depending on where you're travelling, you might not even need a prescription. I'm in Thailand right now, and not half an hour ago I walked into a pharmacy and bought a strip of Cipro over the counter for three bucks.
posted by Succa at 7:24 PM on February 23, 2008

As far as buying while in-country (what Succa suggests), please be wary of that. For one thing, Thailand (among other countries) is classified as a cipro-resistant country (you're prescribed zithromax instead). For another reason, a lot of lesser developed countries cannot guarantee the quality control of their pharmaceuticals [pdf].

As far as buying from a Canadian pharmacy, make sure it's a Canadian pharmacy and not a Chinese (or otherwise non-Canadian) front, which the New York Times, among other media, has done stories about.

There's plenty of AskMeFi questions about reputable online pharmacies, should you have any doubts (although I'm pretty sure the conclusion was 'buy at your own risk, nowhere is really safe').
posted by librarylis at 4:47 AM on February 25, 2008