What Vaccines do I Need?

(This page was updated on 27th January 2024).

There is no single international list of recommended vaccines for a particular country - there is some variation between the recommendations of international agencies (World Health Organisation, U.S. Centres for Disease Control and national governments). The relevant Irish government agency (the H.S.E's 'Health Protection Surveillance Centre') does not produce a country-by-country vaccine recommendation list. The nearest jurisdictions that do this are Scotland (through Health Protection Scotland) and England (through the NaTHNaC/TravelHealthPro website of Public Health England)

The recommendations we are providing on this website represent a consensus of international agency recommendations (particularly Health Protection Scotland), our own professional experience and our desire to strike a balance between wanting to protect you against as many diseases as possible on the one hand and not, on the other hand, wanting to expose you to unnecessary expense and vaccine side-effects.

The country-by-country vaccine tables you see in our website are a guide; what will determine our final recommendation for your trip will be variables like the duration of your stay, the degree to which you're immersed in the local culture/environment and the quality of the accommodation in which you expect to find yourself. Please don't regard the country vaccine tables in our website as anything more than a rough guide. We will provide you with the a more up-to-date, definitive recommendation if you come to see us for a consultation.

  1. Travel vaccines for a particular country can be categorised as being
    1. mandatory (legally required for entry into a country)
    2. recommended
    3. optional (the disease is present in the country but is the risk presented by it is statistically low in many cases).
  2. Usually, the only vaccines that are mandatory are Yellow Fever (sometimes - see below) and Meningitis (for pilgrims going to Mecca in Saudi Arabia at the time of the Hajj/Umrah pilgrimage). At times, proof of Polio vaccination has been an exit requirement for long-stay travellers to some countries (Ethiopia, Nigeria, Pakistan).
  3. Yellow Fever: the issue of whether one needs to be vaccinated against Yellow Fever causes a lot of confusion. The disease occurs only in parts of Latin America and parts of Africa (not Asia). Do you need to be vaccinated against it? Often, yes, but not always. Two factors will determine if you need to be vaccinated or not:
    1. do you need to be protected against the disease and
    2. will you be asked by immigration officials at your destination country to prove that you have been vaccinated?

    In some cases, although Yellow Fever occurs in a country, large parts of the country may not be affected (e.g. Zambia) or although risk occurs throughout a country, it may be at such a low level to make vaccination for protection reasons unnecessary in all except long-term visitors (trips of many weeks/months; e.g. Tanzania).

    If vaccination is not mandatory from an immigration point of view and you are travelling to a non-infected part of the country and not travelling to a neighboring country that is infected, you will not need to be vaccinated.

     

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