When it comes to browsing the internet for health advice it’s hard to know who to trust – any loony can claim to be a doctor online, plus there’s that niggling detail that most websites aren’t benevolent sources of useful information but want to make money.

The site I’m reviewing this week provides advice on travel health, from inoculations and drugs to diseases; and while its objective is to profit, it can only do so by providing comprehensive and reliable information about travel health, something that’s lacking on the internet at the moment.

Called Travelturtle, the site has gleaned information from its sister site, Pulse, an online resource for GPs, so its advice has been provided by certified medical practitioners.

The most sought-after information about travel health is vaccination advice. On the site this is organised by country and date of travel, which is sensible enough. There is also further probing on the type of travel – whether you’ll leave the relatively sanitised environment of hotels for rural areas, for example, thereby enhancing your risk of infection.

This is valid questioning and the advice is comprehensive, but on comparison with a recent trip I made to a travel clinic to seek advice over visiting rural Thailand, there are some omissions. These include specific location details – diseases don’t respect international borders, which means a precise location is required for an effective diagnosis: travellers don’t want to have vaccinations they don’t really need.

Secondly, a doctor can advise on the suitability of drugs where a choice is offered, whereas on Travelturtle, you can’t get subjective advice.

General advice on Travelturtle on subjects such as food, sex, water and transport is fairly logical but it’s useful to have it written down in one place and handy for more naïve travellers. There’s also sound information on diseases, their symptoms and how to avoid infection. Strangely it’s in this section, rather than the “Travel vaccine advice” that the side effects of various drugs and vaccines are detailed – not logical navigation in my view.

Finally, there’s no option to ask for expert advice but the site will launch a forum in the next six to eight weeks where readers can recount their travel health and experiences – a handy resource from the horse’s mouth, but beware those loonies…

We love: the depth of information on vaccines and country-by-country advice; the ‘latest disease breakouts’ news; the separate tab for malaria advice, which is presumably the most popular section; the clean design and unobtrusive advertising.

We hate: it’s useful stuff and would be a handy bookmark for planning travel, but it doesn’t replace the face-to-face advice of a medical practitioner.

Verdict

Design: 8/10
Navigation: 6/10
Content: 7/10
Fulfilment: 5/10

Overall score: 26/40