Travel Vaccination

Abstract

The World Tourism Organization estimated the number of international tourist arrivals to be 1.2 billion in 2016, an increase of 46 million over the previous year, a figure that has been rising constantly for 7 consecutive years. In this context, a long list of vaccines are dispensed and administered in travel clinics around the world. There are two main steps in immunizing travelers, namely, to update routine vaccinations and, second, to provide travel-specific immunization. For the first step, knowledge of a patient’s previous immunizations and personal medical history is necessary. For the second step, considerably more issues must be covered, including obtaining information about the patient’s projected itinerary, mode of travel, planned living conditions during the stay, and purpose of travel. This review focuses on three major and common travel vaccines, namely, yellow fever, dengue, and rabies. It should be remembered that vaccines exist both to protect the visited populations and the travelers, plus those the travelers come in contact with on their return from endemic areas. Travel should be used as a good opportunity to update routine vaccines.