Planning before travel
Before departure, travellers should be advised about the risk of disease in the country or countries they plan to visit and the steps to be taken to prevent illness. The risk to a traveller of acquiring a disease depends on the local prevalence of that disease and on several other factors such as: age, sex, immunization status and current state of health, travel itinerary, duration and style of travel (e.g. fi rst class, adventure, hiking, relief work).
Based on the traveller’s individual risk assessment, a health care professional can determine the need for immunizations and/or preventive medication (prophylaxis) and provide advice on precautions to avoid disease.
There is no single schedule for the administration of immunizing agents to all travellers. Each schedule must be personalized and tailored to the individual traveller’s immunization history, the countries to be visited, the type and duration of travel, and the amount of time available before departure.
Travel is a good opportunity for the health care provider to review the immunization status of infants, children, adolescents and adults. Un-immunized or incompletely immunized travellers should be offered the routine vaccinations recommended in national immunization schedules, in addition to those needed for travel.
The protective effect of many vaccines takes some time to develop following vaccination. The immune response of the vaccinated individual will become fully effective within a period of time that varies with the vaccine, the number of doses required and whether the individual has previously been vaccinated against the same disease. For this reason, travellers are advised to consult a travel medicine practitioner or physician 4–8 weeks before departure in order to allow suffi cient time for optimal immunization schedules to be completed. However, an imminent departure still provides the opportunity to provide both advice and possibly some immunizations.