Vax for Central &Central America

[Jose Mª Garcia]

Hi all,
What jabs should I get for traveling around Central & South America during five months?

Do you recommend Hepatitis A or B? What else?

Thanks and see you
Jose

[Susan Johnson]

Jose

See the following page which is in the Trip Planning section of the site. It includes some useful info from Health Canada with their recommendations on which vaccinations you should have depending on where you're going, and what you'll be doing when you get there.
http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/tri...inations.shtml

Our jabs list for our own RTW travel, including Central/South America:

YELLOW FEVER - good for 10 years
TYPHOID - Typhim Vi - good for 3 years
POLIO SABIN - good for 10 years
A.D.T. (Diptheria & Tetanus) - good for 10 years
HAVRIX (HEPATITIS A) - multiple shots, good for 10 years
ENGERIX-B (HEPATITIS B) - good for 3-5 years
MENINGITIS - good for 3 years
RABIES - multiple shots over several months, good for 3 years per BA Travel Clinic in Cape Town.

Suggest you check with a travel medicine clinic (not your local doctor) a few months before you plan to leave to get their recommendations. Be sure to tell them you're not planning to stay in tourist resorts!

Good luck.

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Susan Johnson
Share the Dream at <A HREF="http://www.HorizonsUnlimited.com/index.shtml" TARGET=_blank>www.HorizonsUnlimited.com
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[JamesCo]

G'day,

Be prepared for a bit of pain when you get your shots - I got mine today (diptheria, yellow-fever, MMR, typhoid, hep A/B, rabies) and it cost $600, U.S., and that's just the first round! Health insurance does not cover this...

The rabies shots are especially expensive - over a hundred dollars each - and three are required, performed over a month. The Hep A/B (aka Twinrix) also takes three shots, but requires a six month gap between the first and the last. Typhoid is four pills, taken 48 hours apart. The rest were a quick jab , but you'll have to drop your drawers since there's only so many places to get punctured

If you're spending less than a month there then you might consider skipping the rabies, but like my doctor said (great salewoman that she is) "if you catch rabies, you'll die". It isn't cheap, but it's better than a funeral.

Hope someone finds this useful,

James.

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[Susan Johnson]

Further to the cost of jabs - we got our initial rabies shots in England at a cost of about 20 GBP, then the final rabies shot in Spain, for 240 pesetas, which is a very small charge, since the Ministerio de Sanidad (Public Health service) does them there.

James - you don't say where you're from or where you got the shots done, but it sounds very expensive. All our shots for Africa, which we had done in the UK, were only 200 GBP for both of us, and the UK is not the cheapest country for shots.

Susan

[JamesCo]

I'm a New Zealander living and working (for now) in New Jersey, in the U.S.

Round two, which was meningitis, rabies & polio, cost another US$300...

I might call around and do some comparison shopping, but I never expected it to be this expensive. Perhaps it's just the cost of being in the U.S. - for instance, getting the ever-so-slightly safer and much more expensive muscular polio vaccine, rather than the oral one. Then there's the doctor's liability-insurance costs, etc. Private, profit-oriented healthcare is never as efficient as public.

James Courtier.

[Timido]

Hey

James, can I use that last phrase as a quote? It`ll come handy down here in Bolivia ;-

Anyways, I would like to add that yellow fever is obligatory in Brazil and Bolivia at least, maybe other countries too.


Happy trip

Tim