Vaccines for Traveling Abroad

Considerably more planning and details go into planning a trip abroad. You’ll have to make sure your passport is up to date, prepare for a potentially long trip and a significant time change and be ready for language and culture barriers.

Vaccines are a critical part of this planning process, especially if you’re traveling to a developing country. Even Americans traveling to Mexico need to be sure they’re not only up to date on their routine vaccinations like tetanus and diphtheria, but also others, depending on the type of trip they’re planning.

To start, contact your doctor and make sure your vaccines are up to date. Next, look online to see what vaccines are recommended based on the location of your trip and whether you’ll be doing things like eating street food, traveling in the back country or engaging in sexual activity. Handy websites to use are the CDC Travelers’ Health page, The Travel Doctor and Passport Health.

These sites will tell you what may be recommended to you. At that point, it’s up to you to decide how to act, and your primary care doctor can also be a resource in making those decisions. Be sure to plan ahead, as vaccines for more rare diseases are not always readily at hand. You may also need to take certain pills or receive shots with a specific lead time.