Greg - when I was doing quite a bit of backpacking in hard to access areas and later in SE Asia, I ALWAYS had a basic med kit with me. You can get really good stuff today in any store that sells camping/climbing/etc gear. A basic kit starts at 20 bucks and the better ones will run $100 to $200 depending on how many contingencies you need to cover. The only time we used it (other than minor cuts, burns or pills) was when an outbreak of meninghitis (sp?) broke out in the area of Nepal we were traveling in and we used the sterile kits instead of the local doctor's equipment for the immunization shot.