MSE Blog: To jab or not to jab, that is the question?

PompeyPete

What the well respected Travel Doctor has to say about malaria...

http://www.traveldoctor.co.uk/malaria.htm

Pollycat

Quote from MSE Amy's blog:

But the question still remains, when faced with so many possible vaccinations that you could have before travelling to some far flung place and most coming with a hefty price tag, which ones do you go for?

There are 2 websites that I know of that have good advice:
http://www.fitfortravel.nhs.uk/home.aspx

http://www.nathnac.org/travel/

The practice nurse in my surgery uses fitfortravel to provide advice.

So, I do my own research then go to see her armed with the relevant information and ready to discuss anything that she says that I don't agree with.

She once recommended we have Japanese Encephalitis vaccination for a trip to China.
I'd already done lots of research, both into the disease and the possibility of catching it at the place we were staying.

"Less than 1 in 1,000,000 travellers per year"
"No reported case in a traveller returning to the UK for over 10 years"
"Risk in rural areas"
"Stays of more than one month"

Erm, we're staying in a city of 15 million people for 2 days.
No thank you.

She did actually agree with my reasoning.

I'm all for having any vaccinations that I need, but not ones recommended by someone just to cover their a**e.

Also, I keep my own record of what vaccinations we've had and how long they last so I know when we're due again.
Good thing I do.
I submitted our travel plan to our surgery - confident that we were fully up to date - and the receptionist rang to say we were due Typhoid vaccinations.

We made an appointment with the practice nurse and yes - they'd made a mistake and missed the last time we'd had typhoid vaccination and we didn't need one.

If I'd not been on the ball, we'd have had a vaccination that we didn't need.