Travel vaccine FAQ
Straight answers to the questions most people have before their travel clinic appointment.
A vaccine teaches your immune system to recognise a specific pathogen — a virus or bacterium — without you having to get ill from it first. Most vaccines contain either a weakened or inactivated version of the pathogen, or just a fragment of it, enough for your immune system to learn the threat and build a defence.
When you later encounter the real thing, your body already knows what to do. The response is faster and stronger than it would be if you'd never been exposed. That's why vaccinated people either don't get ill at all, or get a much milder version of the disease.
Yes — the vaccines used in travel health have been through the same rigorous approval processes as any other medicine. Many of them have been in use for decades with well-understood safety profiles.
Side effects do happen — a sore arm, mild fatigue, occasionally a low fever — but serious adverse reactions are rare. Your travel clinic will ask about any relevant medical history before recommending vaccines, precisely because certain conditions or medications can affect suitability. If you have concerns, that conversation with a clinician is the right place to have them, not Google.
Most are injections — typically into the upper arm. A few, like oral typhoid and oral cholera, are taken as capsules or a drink instead. Your travel clinic will tell you which is which.
Some vaccines require multiple doses spread over weeks or months — rabies pre-exposure, for example, is a three-dose course. This is one of the main reasons you shouldn't leave your travel health appointment until the week before you fly.
Required vaccines are legal entry conditions — Yellow Fever is the main one. If a country requires it and you can't produce a valid certificate, you can be refused entry or quarantined at the border. No exceptions.
Recommended vaccines aren't enforced at the border, but they're still worth taking seriously. They're recommended because there's a genuine risk of exposure in that country. Nobody checks if you've had hepatitis A before letting you into India, but plenty of unvaccinated travellers have regretted not getting it.
At least six to eight weeks before departure, and longer if you're going somewhere that requires the full rabies pre-exposure course (which takes a minimum of 21 days to complete). Some clinics are busy and can't always fit you in quickly.
Leaving it until two weeks before is a gamble — you may not be able to complete multi-dose courses in time, and some vaccines need a week or two to become fully effective anyway.
Usually yes. Most travel vaccines can be given together in the same appointment without any problem. Your clinician will know which combinations work and which need to be spaced out — live vaccines, for instance, sometimes need to be given simultaneously or separated by a few weeks.
Getting several vaccines at once can make your arm sore and leave you feeling a bit rough for a day or two, but it's generally fine and saves you multiple trips to the clinic.
It depends on how long ago, which vaccines you had, and how long they last. Some offer lifelong protection after a full course — hepatitis A and B, for example. Others wear off over time — typhoid vaccination is typically good for three years, Yellow Fever for life after a single dose.
Previous travel doesn't automatically mean you're covered. It's worth checking your vaccination records rather than assuming. If you don't have records, a travel clinic can advise on whether a booster is needed or whether a blood test to check immunity makes sense.
It varies considerably by vaccine. A rough guide:
Yellow Fever — lifelong after a single dose. Hepatitis A — lifelong after a two-dose course. Hepatitis B — typically lifelong after a full course. Typhoid — around three years (injectable) or one year (oral). Rabies pre-exposure — boosters needed every few years depending on ongoing risk. Japanese Encephalitis — a booster after one year, then every few years. Tetanus/Diphtheria — every ten years.
Your travel clinic will advise based on your specific history and destination.
Your vaccination records if you have them — a yellow booklet, a GP printout, anything that shows what you've previously had. Your travel itinerary — dates, destinations, activities — because the advice for a two-week beach holiday and a three-month overland trip through rural areas are very different. And any relevant medical history, particularly if you're immunocompromised, pregnant, or on regular medication.
Not always. Some vaccines aren't suitable for very young children. Others — like Yellow Fever — have specific age restrictions. Children travelling to high-risk destinations need their own travel health assessment, not just a scaled-down version of an adult's. A paediatric travel health consultation is worth it for younger children heading to more demanding destinations.
No, not for most travellers. Malaria prevention for adults relies on antimalarial tablets taken before, during, and after travel — not a vaccine. There is a malaria vaccine (RTS,S/Mosquirix) but it's currently only used in specific childhood immunisation programmes in sub-Saharan Africa, not for travel medicine.
Which antimalarial is right for you depends on your destination and personal health history — your travel clinic will prescribe the appropriate one. Taking the tablets correctly and using mosquito repellent are both essential; the tablets alone aren't enough.