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Immunisations:
- DTP (Diphteria/Tetanus/Polio) - valid for 10 years
- Hepatitis A - 2 injections cover you for life
- Hepatitis B - 3 injections cover you for life
- Typhoid - valid for 3 years
- Meningitis A, C, W135 and Y - valid for 5 years
For the Japanese B encephalitis the vaccine is only valid 3 years and... not that safe (also unlicensed in the UK). Side
effects are numerous and when you know that it is prepared using mouse brain that really puts you off! However there is an
effective homeopathic prevention which is endorsed by the State government of Andhra Pradesh in India.
Other vaccines include rabies and cholera but apart from the fact that those diseases are rare
in travellers, the jabs don't cover you at 100% anyway.
British Airways travel clinics and Nomad Travel clinics are examples of places where you can get the jabs done. Nomad Travel has slightly cheaper prices and friendly advice - so we opted for them. But remember that you can get most of those on the
NHS (DTP/Hepatitis) or if you live in France... well you will get your money back for most of them!
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Malaria is a serious and potentially fatal disease. At first we didn't envisage taking any malaria tablets expect
for emergency treatment pills. But the paranoia on the road and the risk of catching recurring malaria - or worse - added
to the fact that malaria prevention pills do work (on average 96% for Doxycycline) convinced us that we should
opt for them. The question being which one...
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Quite a lot of areas in Asia are Chloroquine resistent so we ruled this one out straight away. Same thing for Mefloquine
(better known by its brand name Lariam). The safer, better malaria prophylaxis is Malarone (Atovaquone-Proguanil) but
it is extremely expensive and cannot be found in Asia (apart from Singapore). Therefore we've opted for Doxycycline, an antibiotic
widely available in Asia, which can be taken for up to one year for malaria prevention.
We planned to start taking the pills from South Nepal onwards for approximately 6 to 7 months,
but ended up taking them in Burma only (we went to quite remote places) and Indonesia (starting from Thailand where there
IS Malaria in the South). India had just been re-classified as lower risk when we visited and Sri Lanka only has the mild
strain of malaria mainly present in Northern and Eastern provinces (same as the war...).
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