Unusual amounts of illness in New Zealand

[James A]

Apologies for another poll, but I'd dearly like to find out about this. Too much time on my hands again?

I've read a few posts from people saying they had much more illness in their first year in New Zealand than normal. Is this your experience too? Thanks.

[Mamee & Co]

No, much more illness in second year! We were surprised. Things went down hill after my OH and I caught whooping cough at the end of last year and since then have had more URTIs. Which is why I am awake at this time of night and posting ;-)

[cappuccino]

All the immigrants I know (including myself) were particularly susceptible to local viruses in the first year, and many into the second year too!

[JandM]

To be fair, and so as not to alarm anyone coming across this thread later, I don't think it's just *in New Zealand* that people get ill more often than they've been used to - they'd be quite likely to do it anywhere new that they went to live, and if they went to work among a new group of people, too, because of coming into contact with germs they haven't yet built up resistance to. That said, some people may have allergic reactions triggered by native plants in NZ that aren't like any where they have come from.

[benandclare]

Nope in the 5.2 years been pretty healthy from viruses, colds etc etc

[Carey]

More than usual for all of us; violent vomiting bugs, sore thoats and colds....in the first few months of arriving. Put it down to working with little snotty nosed kids....as for the rest of the family, just new strains we weren't used to?

[MetalSoul]

I have never been so ill as when I came here.......usually healthy as anything....I've caught every bug going and have had 8 sick days since Feb this year

[Ana&Steve]

I put "less than usual". We really haven't caught anything too terrible in the 8 months we've been here; I think we've each had a blah day or tow that we thought we were getting something but it went away. I think it may have something to do with us not having kids and that everyone we knew in the States had kids but we don't know that many people here yet...not trying to say anything mean about kids but they do like to pass on every ailment that is going around their school!

[Familyofmonkeys]

In our first 18 months in NZ we went through several months of horrible stomach bugs and near constant colds and sniffles. It didn't happen immediately but once kids were in school, kindy and toddler groups. I put it down to different strains of bugs, not just those endemc within the local population, but also because we live in an area with a high expat population so lots of new immigrants bringing their bugs with them from elsewhere in the world. We went through a similar, but shorter lasting bout of illness when we moved to South Island with more stomach bugs and colds, but thankfully had no repeat when we returned to Auckland post earthquake.

[Georgebulldog]

Apart from having to deal with dd having chickenpox in the first couple of weeks we've been OK. My eczema is definitely better. I'd heard about the Wellington hack though, a lot of people suffer when they first move here