Travel vaccines for your trip

What the checker does

The checker at the top reads the CDC page of each stop and puts the lines side by side: which vaccines CDC lists for most travelers, for some travelers, or to consider, and which routine vaccines it asks everyone to be up to date on. It then follows the route. For each border it applies the country's yellow fever entry rule to the country you arrive from, which is how a certificate that nobody asks for in Kenya becomes compulsory at the Tanzanian border a week later. It adds CDC's malaria advice for each stop, with the drugs CDC lists there. From your departure date and age, it computes the latest day each series can start, using the schedules in CDC's Yellow Book, and from the price lists of 9 county health departments it prices the vaccines, with their visit and administration fees. None of this replaces a consultation: a clinician sees your history, your health and the details of the trip, and decides. The checker gives you the list to bring.

Where the list comes from

Every line comes from a public source with its date. The vaccine lists, yellow fever rules and malaria areas are CDC's, read on the destination pages at wwwnc.cdc.gov with one request every 20 seconds, as the site's robots file asks, and reread every month. CDC's material is in the public domain; it is quoted here with attribution and without change to its substance, and each country page of this site shows CDC's own words in a separate block, with the date CDC last reviewed the page. Schedules, lead times and contraindications come from the CDC Yellow Book. Prices come from the self-pay lists that health departments publish, each linked with its date, from the CDC adult vaccine price list and, for malaria tablets, from the NADAC survey of what pharmacies pay. For UK travelers, the free and paid jabs follow the NHS travel vaccinations page. The method page lists them all.

The order of the stops

Most yellow fever rules depend on the country you arrive from, not on your passport. India, Thailand, South Africa, Tanzania and 92 other countries ask for a certificate only from travelers who come from a country with yellow fever risk, and many of them count a long airport transit there. 5 countries name the exact countries they check: Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Paraguay, Venezuela. So the same two countries can need a certificate in one order and not in the other. Put them in the checker in the order of your flights, with the country where the trip starts, and the verdict for each border follows. The certificate page lists every rule.

When to start

The NHS advises seeing a GP or travel clinic 4 to 6 weeks before travel, and CDC's schedules explain why. The yellow fever certificate becomes valid 10 days after the shot. The typhoid shot needs 14 days, the oral capsules a week of doses plus a week. Japanese encephalitis takes two doses, seven days apart for adults of 18 to 65, so 14 days at the least, and 35 days at other ages. Rabies takes two doses a week apart. Hepatitis A, by contrast, can be given up to the day of departure, and its second dose can wait six months. The checker shows each date for your departure; a late visit still helps, since several vaccines protect even when given days before the trip.

What it costs

Travel vaccines are priced by each clinic, and in the United States few clinics publish their prices. County health departments are an exception, and 9 of their lists were read for this site. They put the yellow fever shot at $226 to $360, the typhoid shot at $140 to $203, a hepatitis A dose at $75 to $129, and the two-dose series of Japanese encephalitis or rabies at several hundred dollars each. Some add a consultation or an administration fee per shot. Insurance usually covers routine vaccines such as hepatitis A and B, and often excludes travel-only ones. The cost page has the full table, and in the United Kingdom the travel jabs page sorts free from paid.

Malaria is a prescription, not a vaccine

There is no malaria vaccine for travelers. CDC advises prescription tablets for 84 countries, often only for some of their areas: the border provinces of Thailand, the Amazon of Peru, three states of Mexico, but every area below 2,000 meters in India and most of sub-Saharan Africa. The tablets start before the trip and continue after it, from seven days to four weeks depending on the drug, and the checker counts them for your stay. The malaria pills page compares the drugs, and the malaria by country page lists the areas.

What the site does not do

The site does not decide for you. CDC's wording is precise, recommended for most travelers, for some, may be considered, and the site keeps it; it never turns a line to consider into a must. It does not ask for a name, an e-mail or a phone number, does not book appointments and sends nothing to a clinic. It does not cover pregnancy, a weakened immune system or a child's routine schedule beyond the lines CDC prints, since those call for a clinician. And it says when it does not know: where an official price could not be found, as for private clinics in the UK, Canada or Australia, the figure is left out rather than estimated.