Jeff, Mick and I had a very nice meeting with a nurse at Passport Health who provided us with all kinds of information about our trip, including the likelihood of our getting traveler’s diarrhea (100%) and the somewhat less likely, but scary possibility of contracting rabies in India (highest rate of rabies in the world and I do like to pet every dog I see!). Typhoid, Japanese encephalitis, yellow fever – also not good prospects. So, the estimate for playing it safe and getting immunized for all of the above … $2,343 PER PERSON ($7,029 total). That does not include Hep A or B, the recommended bug juice, bug juice for fabric, oral rehydration salts, antibiotics for diarrhea, malaria prevention, 1st aid kit, or the Steri-Pen water purifier. After paying the $150 consultation fee and pre-paying $750 for three yellow fever vaccines (low supply and high demand … get ’em while you can!) and feeling a case of Visa-borne illness coming on, I took to the interweb to search for options. To my surprise, my own tax dollars provide some relief via the Department of Public Health, who will provide the same series of shots for just $1,872/ each or $5,616 total. Still, the ROI is questionable. Further investigation revealed that in 2016 the WHO decided that yellow fever vaccines were good for life rather than for 10 years, meaning I’m all set (got one in 2007). And, of all the countries we’re considering going, only one area of Kenya actually requires a yellow fever vaccine. Scratch that from the itinerary and we’re up between $400 to $750. As for all those rabid dogs and bats, even if we splurged on the three preventative shots (@$300/jab) we’d still need two additional shots after being bitten by an infected animal (as opposed to 4 shots of the rabies vaccine & one immunoglobulin shot if not pre-vaccinated). Typhoid: our primary care doc can give us a script for the oral form, reducing the cost to under $100 for all three of us. Japanese encephalitis: based on where we’re going in countries where JE is endemic and the time we’re going, the likelihood of contraction is very low. Also, as JE is transmitted by mosquitos, we’ll just DEET up, invest in bed nets, and dream of better ways to spend thousands of dollars.
Sounds like a lot of work let alone many dollars. Nice you found out some of this stuff. Have check with patti and rob as they just went to the amazon etc and couldn’t get off the boat do to some shot thing which they thought they were covered for and it wasn’t adequate. They were a little ticked about that. I will call and see what it was. Where in the heck are you going. I thought it was Europe! Be back at you soon..
Sounds like a lot of work let alone many dollars. Nice you found out some of this stuff. Have to check with patti and rob as they just went to the amazon etc and couldn’t get off the boat do to some shot thing which they thought they were covered for and it wasn’t adequate. They were a little ticked about that. I will call and see what it was. Where in the heck are you going. I thought it was Europe! Be back at you soon..