Immunizations for Travel
- See also: Malaria Protection for Travel
Parent Q&A
Archived Q&A and Reviews
Vaccinations for Costa Rica trip
April 2006
We are traveling to Costa Rica with our 2 girls in May. Kaiser recommends that the 4 year old have a typhoid vaccine and that both kids take 7 weeks of an antimalarial (methloquine, I think). Right now I am thinking they will take the antimalarials but am iffy on the typhoid. Has anybody taken kids to Costa Rica recently? Any advice? Also, I am looking for an effective, but not-too-toxic insect repellant. Thanks, Jill
Check out the CDC (Center for Disease Control) website to see what they reccommend. http://www.cdc.gov/travel/camerica.htm
I travelled all over Africa and did not take malarial medication. I have heard HORROR stories, the kind of thing to ruin your trip. So, think twice. I was very careful to apply strong insect repellant constantly, and to keep my tent zipped up. A woman that I travelled with that took the malaria pills got malaria.. probably when she was drunk one night and didn't take precautions. So, in short, the pills are not 100% effective and you still have to use repellant! don't do it...
Vaccinations for trip to India
March 2000
We are going to be traveling to Dharamsala, India, in late May with our two year old daughter and staying put there for up to six months. Does anyone know if Malaria is a risk in Dharamsala? For the most part it seems like it's not, but if anyone has any personal experience with this I'd appreciate hearing about it. Currently we are giving her all the regular childhood vaccinations as well as Typhoid and Hep A for our travels. Does anyone know if the meningococcal meningitis shot is safe for a child just turned two? Is there any protection from tuberculosis available? Lastly, if anyone has traveled to this area with a small child i'd love to hear about your experience. Zoe
For the family traveling to India, you can go to the Centers for Disease Control website @:
I haven't been to Dharamsala specifically but our son (now 3yrs old) was born in India and we travelled back and forth (US, Delhi, Bombay, southern India) for the first 18 months. I had a very good pediatrician in India and he strongly suggested that we give malaria medication to our son after he was about six months old. Most malaria medication has side effects and our doctor gave medication for short periods of time (2-3 moths after which we took a break for a while before restarting--he also made us get the pediatric dose from the US, which can be a pain because once mixed the medication must be refrigerated). We also followed preventative measures: closing our doors/windows during dusk, clearing all drains and standing water around the house, mosquito netting, burning a particular herb (not with teh baby in the room), long cotton clothing, insect creams etc..
Some Indian pediatricians still suggest BCG vaccine (for lung TB) but I was told that it didn't prevent all strains that are prevalent. You didn't have Hep B on your list ... and I'm pretty sure our son had that. In any case, while the vaccinations are important I think there are a bunch of other issues relating to general hygiene/food preparation and other related stuff that are equally, if not more important to make sure your baby and you remain healthy and fine. Neema
I did not see the initial request for advice, so I don't know specifically what you were asking. We travel to Calcutta every year and get the following innoculations: thyphoid (available in a five-year pill); malaria (pills that you have to take weekly beginning four weeks before the trip and ending three weeks after the trip); hepatitus A (now one shot with a booster); and tetenus (always a smart thing to be innoculated against). Other shots are recommended for other parts of India (eg., I think they recommned cholera for northern India.)
Travel medicine seems to be an unstable line of business. Every year I've had to go to a new physician because the one I went to the previous year had stopped doing travel medicine. It's very frustrating and not always easy to feel really clear about what you need, particularly for a child under the age of two. Linda
Once they are negative you just ask your pediatrician for documentation, just like you might have to ask them for a letter when kiddo returns to school. It is not a big deal.
Hi there,
Health care provider here— I write them all the time for folks who’ve recently recovered from COVID-19 and are no longer infectious and need to travel. Just ask your pediatrician (they may require a visit/phone visit) and they should be able to help you with a letter. Happy travels!
My husband got one from a nurse, but your doctor can give you one. The tricky thing is that according to the CDC instructions, you need to provide info on a positive PCR test, which we didn’t have. It all ended up being moot for us, because my husband was able to test negative for our return trip (2 months post covid) and we didn’t have to show anyone his letter to see if it would pass muster.
We did this recently for a trip to Italy. We first got a PCR test to document the date of the positive result, then waited until symptoms subsided and called our doctor’s office to get a letter of recovery for travel purposes. They were very familiar and had a form letter ready to go; they just signed and dated it and emailed it over. Hope your experience is similarly seamless. Happy travels!
Hi. I had to get one of these myself after I tested positive a month before I was to travel internationally. Turns out they are now pretty standard. I called my PCP and a form letter was uploaded to my Kaiser app right after the phone call. In my situation, I had to have a record of a positive PCR test and it was recommended that I do not test again. I'm fairly positive your pediatrician's office can help you.
Hope your child is feeling well!
In our case we needed a similar letter for return to daycare. We got one from our pediatrician. It starts with "This letter confirms recovery from COVID-19 as you report completion of self-isolation per pandemic public health guidelines and you presently report no infectious symptoms consistent with COVID-19 infection. Dates noted are xxxx." I can't speak to whether this will be accepted by an airline, but would think so. I would suggest getting the letter and then calling the airline. Good luck!
Glad you posted here because we are in the same situation. It’s great if your doctor knows what they are doing, not great if your doctor has no idea. I went through Kaiser to try to get this and the Kaiser phone tree was stubbornly unhelpful. We don’t even know if our doctor is more helpful because we can’t even get through to her, we just get automated form responses. We tested positive on a home test, but because we tested positive at home, Kaiser wouldn’t authorize a PCR test. The woman on the phone at the records department had no idea what a document of recovery was, and sent my husband a letter that she said would do, but I looked it up on the CDC website and it wouldn’t have worked. So make sure you do your research and your paperwork is in order. A self test won’t be accepted, it has to be a PCR test. I tried to post an article from NYT that was very helpful, but it wouldn’t copy and paste, but you can look it up. It’s called “I’m overseas and I tested positive. What now?” Scroll down to the details about the document of recovery. Good luck! We are bringing proctored test strips with us on our trip just in case something is amiss with our Document of Recovery (if we ever get one). If Kaiser remains uncooperative maybe will go through a third party vendor to get a PCR (since we just got sick) and give us the document when we recover.