JDiver

For advice about mosquitos:

If you're going to an area where there are Anopheles or Aedes mozzies and malaria, dengue, etc. you can buy clothing impregnated with permethrin or spray it on yourself. It persists through several launderings. If you'll be in the bush you can buy mosquito nets impregnated with permethrin.

Be careful of mosquito coils or plug in cookers, particularly if you have asthma or other respiratory condition. I don't, and yet a dose of "FumaKilla" in-room plug-in cooker with past ille's in Perú forced me (reeling and gasping for air) out of the room until it could be properly ventilated and took me over an hour to recover from breathing difficulties and feeling I was suffocating.

If you buy local repellent be sure it's the right kind and percentage - and still within its pull date. Read about repellents and their effects - picaridin and DEET are the ones recommended most.

(When I travel to malaria us areas such as East or Central Africa, Papua New Guinea or Vanuatu I usually take Malarone with me - and would take it presumptively if I had malarial symptoms. I always have dosage information with me. But I do have it for malaria us areas - I've known of people who didn't pay attention and who died because they didn't protect themselves and got falciparum (the worst, and the most common in locales I've mentioned but not in the Americas) malaria and had it become cerebral.)

Do use good sources: a travel clinic or Doctor may in fact be better informed than your family practitioner - about travel medicine. Your own practitioner may be important if you have a record of any condition (such as asthma) as well. There are decent travel sites, such as CDC, NHS or IAMAT. Don't just rely on a general site like FT.