NHS Travel Vaccinations

SevenOfNine

We keep our basic travel vaccinations up to date, primarily Hep A, Typhoid & Polio/Diptheria/Tetanus. These are done on the NHS at our GP's travel clinic, they used to be recommended even for life in UK, but perhaps not nowadays though?

If that's no longer the case, I CAN see the argument that holiday travel is voluntary so why should the NHS pay for such vaccinations. But what I don't understand is why, because my friends GP surgery has dispensed with it's travel clinic, she's been told she'll have to go elsewhere & was even advised to go to my GP's travel clinic, but will of course have to pay privately wherever she goes.

How can that be right or fair, a postcode lottery surely? How can anything on the NHS not be everyone or no-one? I'm not saying it should be paid for by NHS for all, just consistent across the board.

I don't get it, when did this all start because it's a new one on me?

hollydays

If you can afford to travel you can afford to pay?
Problem is you are recounting this story second hand.
Where is your friend travelling to?

DoaM

GP practices receive NHS funding ... how they then use that funding (within the guidelines) is up to them. If one practice wants to offer free vaccinations and another wants to charge for them then that's OK (as far as I am aware).

The same applies in relation to new and expensive treatments ... different health authorities take different decisions as to what they'll fund. The postcode lottery is nothing new ... it's been on the main TV news for years now.

agrinnall

DoaM wrote: »

If one practice wants to offer free vaccinations and another wants to charge for them then that's OK

I think that the point that the OP is making is not that there is a charge for some vaccinations but that some medical practices now refuse to offer them at all. Which may be allowed, but is certainly short sighted if the traveller decides not to bother going elsewhere and comes home with with some disease that is going to mean a lot more work for the practice that they can't charge the patient for.

heatherw_01

I have always paid for travel vaccinations even at my gp

shaun_from_Africa

Personally, I can see one reason why some practices may offer the inoculations free of charge and others may not.

As each practice only receives limited funding from the NHS, they probably have to pick and choose what services to provide free and which ones have to be paid for and in some areas, travel jabs may take a far lower priority.
Say for example a practice in an area where there is a fair amount of very low paid or unemployed people.
On average, it's probably a fair guess that fewer travel vaccinations are requested compared to a very affluent area and the practice manager may have decided not to provide a travel clinic but to pump far more money into things such as ensuring that child nutrition advice is sent to all parents and that elderly people with little or no money or family members living nearby get support.