Dr. Rudy Zimmer – Medical Director
About Dr. Zimmer:
His medical career spanning more than three decades has taken him to East Africa, as well as rural and remote Canada. Having started his travels as a teenager, Dr. Zimmer loves to backpack independently, including 30 years of trips to places such as: Tibet, Myanmar, Eastern Europe, Nepal, India, China, Costa Rica, Thailand, Morocco, Malaysia, Peru, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand and rural Cuba. On reaching 50 years old, he successfully reached the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro on a full moon night. At 55 years old, he spent one month exploring the four main valleys and crossing two mountain passes in the Mount Everest (Khumbu) region sleeping above 4000 metres for three weeks.
Dr. Rudy Zimmer is a Public Health and Preventive Medicine specialist with a Certificate of Knowledge in Clinical Tropical Medicine and Travellers’ Health (CTropMed®). After more than 20years in travel and tropical medicine practice at Odyssey, he continues to provide a full continuum of services from pre-travel prevention to in-country support to post-travel acute care and ongoing health surveillance for expats.
Dr. Zimmer is a clinical assistant professor within the University of Calgary’s Department of Community Health Sciences, and is involved in travel medicine training of resident doctors here at Odyssey. More recently, he became an Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) registered physician, as well as addressing the needs of business travellers in general.
As member of the editorial board of the Journal of Travel medicine, Dr. Zimmer continues to work toward improving the medical literature on travel and tropical medicine through reviews and primary research. From 2007 to 2020, he was the medical consultant for Alberta Health Services (Calgary Zone) overseeing travel health services and HIV post-exposure prophylaxis. He now works for Health Canada in clinical evaluations of vaccines, and is an ex-officio member of Committee to Advise on Tropical Medicine and Travel (CATMAT).