Medical Guides Can Help on Trips : On the market are books written especially for foreign destinations, with listings of doctors abroad.

Before a trip, Adrian Kalvinskas consults guidebooks not only to discover the best restaurants and landmarks, but to determine if he needs to take any special health precautions or obtain immunizations.

He wasn’t always so careful. The turning point was a hiking trip in Morocco when he became so dehydrated that he ended up flat on his back for two days and had to be transported by mule down from the Atlas Mountains to a local village for medical attention. “After you get really ill on a trip, you tend to be more cautious, to listen to dos and don’ts,” said Kalvinskas, owner of Distant Lands, a travel bookstore in Pasadena.

Destination guidebooks often include a section or two on health information pertaining to a specific locale. But there is much more extensive information to be found in a host of travel health guides devoted entirely to health precautions and strategies for travelers. Here is a sampling of the current crop:

THE POCKET DOCTOR (The Mountaineers, 1992, $4.95) .

Even the lightest packer could find room for this 96-page paperback, slim enough to slip into a pocket. It opens with handy immunization tables, and presents concise information on preventing and treating everything from colds to worms (don’t walk barefoot). Also included is often-overlooked advice for the traveler returning home (be alert to symptoms that might signal parasites or other maladies). The author, Dr. Stephen Bezruchka, has more than an emergency medicine background lending him credibility, as the biographical note attests. “He has had giardiasis, ascariasis and amebiasis, but not recently.”

HEALTH GUIDE FOR INTERNATIONAL TRAVELERS by Dr. Thomas P. Sakmar, Dr. Pierce Gardner and Dr. Gene Peterson (Passport Books, 1993, $5.95).

Another pocket-size guide, Passport’s version is written by three physicians with extensive travel and travel medicine experience. It’s neatly divided into pre-travel, travel and post-travel sections. The 143-page book includes parts on how to find a doctor abroad (more than 500,000 Americans need to do so each year), how to find travel health insurance and how to handle medical problems such as sore throat, diarrhea and earache on the road. There are suggestions on what to include in a medical kit, and a country-by-country list of immunization requirements.

HEALTH INFORMATION FOR INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL (U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services Public Health Service, 1992, $6).

If it’s vaccination information you need, this 172-page government paperback probably provides the most up-to-date information. This book, compiled by the Public Health Service, lists vaccination requirements of the World Health Organization and the U.S. Public Health Service recommendations on immunizations. It even shows a sample of a completed certificate of vaccination. The information is useful but makes for dry reading . . . until you reach the “Health Hints” section. It includes important advice on such varied issues as how to obtain and evaluate a cruise ship sanitation score and why it’s vital to bypass Haitian goatskin handicrafts (they may be contaminated with long-living spores of a bacterium that causes anthrax, a serious infection usually found in livestock but one that can spread to people).

STAYING HEALTHY IN ASIA, AFRICA AND LATIN AMERICA (Volunteers in Asia, Inc., 1988, $7.95).

An updated, 200-page edition of this paperback guidebook for travelers who visit less-developed countries is due out in April by Moon Publications. It’s written by Dirk Schroeder, who has been a public health worker in developing nations. The next edition, now at press, will include information both for short-term travelers and those who plan to live off the beaten path for several months. It will contain an illness prevention section listing required and recommended immunizations, health supplies to take along and how to eat and drink safely.

INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL HEALTH GUIDE (Travel Medicine, Inc., 1992, $16.95).

Updated annually by author Dr. Stuart Rose, a travel medicine specialist, the International Travel Health Guide got a rave review in the Journal of Wilderness Medicine. Rose’s 390-page paperback, now in its fourth edition, includes a listing of travelers’ clinics in the United States and Canada and the usual information on immunizations. He includes a comprehensive listing of travel health insurance companies.

INTERNATIONAL ASSN. FOR MEDICAL ASSISTANCE TO TRAVELLERS DIRECTORY (IAMAT, 1992, free).

This directory of English-speaking doctors is available free by writing the nonprofit IAMAT, 417 Center St., Lewiston, N.Y. 14092.