BootsnAll Travel Community

I am off to South America to go bike touring in April.. and with a bit of research ascertained that i would need to get:

Twinrx (hep a and b)
Yellow fever (maybe)
DPT (tetanus/diptheria/pertusis)
malaria pills...

Anyways, after an uncooperative meeting with my doctor where he refused to answer any of my questions about specific medications, i was sent to a travel clinic (where you call a number and meet a lady in an unused stall at the mall - very unprofessional, but legit.)

The lady was nice enough, loaded me up with info on the areas id be travelling, and all sorts of info on the medicines id need.

However, the problem was - she overprescribed majorly (to me being an obviously budget young traveller)

She said "i would not leave the country without:"

flu shot
pneumonia shot
twinrix
typhoid
adacil (dpt)
malaria pills
dukoral
antibiotic
yellow fever

This is LOTS of money. The first 2 are totally unneccessary for most people in good health. Typhoid isn't even an issue where ill be going...

Turns out i already had hep b and DPT so i just got hep A and will maybe do yellow fever..

After talking to a couple people - it sounds like the travel clinics offer prescribe WAY too much, or take a very liberal approach to assessing the necessity of vaccines.

Has anyone experienced this?

Yes. Same advice given here. In fact she travel nurse gave me a polio booster shot without a discussion and before I could make up my mind. I'm serious she was over zealous.

Only when I kept saying hey I'm allergic to eggs so which one of the vaccines is incubated in egg did she stop and think about Yellow Fever shot.

In fact when they were giving me the Yellow Fever shot in the allergy clinic (since it is incubated in a duck egg), half way through a doctor came and said that the vaccination I was taking for the area I was going to was unecessary.

I personally HATE the medical system here in the US. doctors don't have time and Travel nurses have NEVER traveled!!

MY mistake was not doing ALL my research before going to the Travel clinic to ask all the questions.

Next time I will know better.

quote:

Originally posted by Madhu:

I personally HATE the medical system here in the US. doctors don't have time and Travel nurses have NEVER traveled!!

And you dear booty are in San freakin Francisco!

Imagine what it's like for us near Redding, Eureka or Chico.

I´ll actually speak of a really good travel clinic that I go to. Some of the nurses have actually travelled. But even if they haven´t, the do not tend to over prescribe. I always do my research beforehand, so I know what I need anyways. But the nurses have been very through with their sit down every time I have gone.

For example, this past time I went (for Panama-Costa Rica), we had to figure out kind of a timeline. Part of Panama is Chlorquine resistant, and parts are not. So I got prescriptions for Malarone and Chloroquine based on the time frames and regions. She was very careful not to overprescribe.

Kudos to the ADC Travel Clinic in Austin.