Today we went to the University of Washington Medical Center- The Travel Service http://depts.washington.edu/travmed/ for our vaccinations. We’d scheduled our annual physicals early just in anticipation of the trip, but our family doctor recommended going to a specific travel clinic. The Travel Service was incredibly efficient! They took down our itinerary and then bombarded us with options and recommendations. For our proposed list of India, South America (and Europe) they recommended: Typhoid, Polio and Yellow Fever. The first two are mostly for India and the last for our proposed trip to see the Amazon area of Brazil.
In addition to a mountain of pamphlets for things we can’t be inoculated against they handed up prescriptions for two segments of anti malarial (Malarone Atovaquone), altitude illness (Acetazolamide) and prolonged Montezuma’s Revenge (Azithromycin). They also recommended that we consider getting vaccinated against Japanese Encephalitis and Rabies.
Sometimes it’s hard to walk the line between being responsible and protecting yourself and being overly zealous. I suppose if I get bit by a dog in a remote village I’ll be glad I was over zealous – it almost happened near some gypsy caves in southern Spain, but I was close to great hospitals there.
They gave us handy booklets with our official records inside to carry with our passports. I have to admit I have renewed respect for the mosquito and will be on guard applying DEET like it’s my job.
