Travel Clinic Vaccines & Immunizations

The purpose of travel is to meet people, have fun, or get work done; not to fall sick in some foreign country. Travel vaccinations or travel immunizations help you stay healthy. But it takes 2 weeks for most travel vaccines to become fully effective. Some travel vaccines need repeat doses.

A visit to our NYC travel clinic 2 weeks prior to international travel is good for the majority of travelers going to Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Columbia, South America, Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Ghana, Asia, India, China, Thailand, or Malaysia. If you are planning to be in the wild and go camping in remote wilderness, you need to come in at least 4 weeks prior to your travel abroad.

Bring your passport if you are coming for a yellow fever certificate or a yellow fever card. A yellow fever vaccine certificate is required in most countries in South America. It is also called the International Certificate of Vaccination.

If you have any vaccination or travel inoculation records, bring them with you, especially if you have taken travel vaccines on your previous travel abroad.

Health insurance does not cover travel vaccines or travel immunization-related consultations. Most travel clinics will charge you for a travel clinic visit or travel vaccine consultation. We accept all credit cards and cash for our travel medicine services. We do not accept personal checks.

Our travel clinic visit cannot be combined with any other medical visit. We keep all the travel vaccines you will need for routine travel internationally.

Travel vaccination depends on the destination you are traveling to and whether you are going to be camping in the wilderness for an extended period of time or not. We encourage you to visit the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Travelers’ Health web site and click on destinations where all countries are listed alphabetically. This is the most up-to-date information on health risks in these countries.

All travel doctors worldwide check this site. The CDC’s Travelers’ Health web site is the best and most reliable website for international travel-related guidance.

You do not need any blood tests before getting travel vaccines. If you are not sure about a routinely given vaccine (like a measles vaccine) or want to be absolutely certain of your immunity to a particular disease before going into an endemic area or an area with an ongoing outbreak, then there may be a role for that specific disease-related blood test.

For routine travel, this situation does not apply. In our experience, it is unusual that you would need any blood tests before traveling abroad, especially since it is an added expense as well.

Yes. We provide travel vaccines and travel clinic services to group travelers who participate in adventure travel, corporate travel, or business travel, as well as charitable and mission organization-related travelers.

We can make sure we have the vaccines for large groups set aside so that no one needs to return a second time. Call us ahead of time if you have a large group coming in so we can better assist you. If it is a church or a large group, we can even come to you and provide the travel inoculations on site.

A “required” travel shot is when that country’s government requires an international traveler to provide acceptable proof of vaccination before permitting the traveler to enter the country.

A “recommended” travel vaccination means it is a travel vaccine that is good to get as it will protect the traveler from the disease but it is not mandatory to have gotten that travel vaccination shot before the traveler can be allowed to enter that country.

You can try it but travel clinic services and travel vaccinations are not part of your health insurance benefit.

Be careful with online travel clinics because the travel consultation fee is usually a charge above and beyond the travel vaccine charge. Read their fine print or call and ask first since they require you to pay the consultation fee before giving you the travel vaccine.

If you had a travel clinic consultation visit with us, you can call us or email us.

Finding local resources used to be an issue before the advent of the internet. Nowadays, you can always find a local doctor by searching on the web. Don’t fall for a “travel doctor” in another country. They will charge you a lot more for their consultation. There is so much travel information on the web today, that we feel that travel clinic visits in foreign countries are no longer needed as long as you have access to the internet locally.

Travel vaccines are not routine vaccines and are not available at other practices.

Talking about free clinics, we have heard some crazy stories over the years. If you go to a free clinic for a medical problem, just make sure that the person giving you any injection or vaccine is actually a licensed provider (a nurse, physician assistant/PA, or a doctor).

Some free clinics (even official ones) don’t have licensed providers and claim to “operate under the license” of the administrative head. That is a red flag. NYS public health law is very clear on who can inject or give vaccines. You won’t know until you ask. You really do not want just anyone to inject you with a vaccine.