TRAVEL health advice from IMMUNISATION gurus please (dds not immunised)

[noonar]

ok. i'd like to to ask the advice of anyone who is v knowledgeable about immunisations. i've decided not to give my dds aged 2.5 and 5 any jabs, for various reasons.

anyway, we are going to morocco in march, for a family wedding. i've been looking at travel health websites and would like to know how i assess the risk of things like TB etc, which are mentioned on the site, but there is no actual requirement to be immunised?

i dont want to have a debate about whether its wrong not to immunise, so no lectures please - but would be glad of any advice about weighing up risk factors, as i would possibly consider one or 2 jabs, if i felt it was really vital.

this immunisation business to me, is largely to do with how i percieve risks- the risk of immunising, vs the risk of not...So how do i find out which, if any diseases in morocco pose a really significant risk?

tia

Oh that's tricky. I suppose my main concerns would be tetanus (but then I'm always bloody worried about tetanus- spend my whole life concerned about it!) and I'd want to check out things like polio and hep A.

Problem with tetanus of course is that you can't have just a tetanus jab you have to have the 6 in 1. Have you got The Vaccine Guide by Randall Neustaedter? It's very good at listing pros/cons.

jimjams, i actually do plan to give them tetanus, but gather a non mercury based option will be more readily available soon. thanks for the book recommendation .

i too have decided not to immunise my kids so no lecture here might find the info you are looking for the jabs website - jabs dot org

Really- oh brilliant- can you let me know if you hear its been introduced. DS2 is 5 now and it does concern me that he's not protected against tetanus (and ds3 is a nutter- whilst I wouldn't give him anything yet I just know he is going to be the one I am continually carting up to casualty).

Hope you find some useful info- and have a good holiday.

will keepyou posted, jimjams. maybe someone with more info will come along soon...

ps, thanks for the tip, saltnshake.

The only diseases (in addition to tetanus and polio) they recommend you immunise against if travelling to Morocco are hepatitis A and typhoid.
Both of these are spread by the faecal-oral route ie by contaminated food and water. If you're staying in posh hotels in cities and are close to medical help if something does go wrong the vaccines will be less important than if you were trekking, staying in basic accomodation etc.

TB, diphtheria etc aren't huge risks if you're there briefly as tourists - the only time you might think about them is if you were living / working there for an extended period.

mrs badger, that is really helpful.isnt polio a live vaccine? it scares me a bit, tbh. do you know anything about mercury/ tetanus vaccine?

I'm coming at it from the microbiology side rather than as a vaccination expert, so am not at all up on the mercury front.
The polio used to be a live vaccine but now the rate of polio worldwide has dropped so far they've gone back to the (slightly less effective but much less side-effecty) 'inactivated' one.

Morocoo had its last reported case of polio in 1989 but it still occurs in parts of Africa and is not a fun disease, much worse than either hep A (which tends to be mild in children) or typhoid (which repsonds to antibiotics).

this is an interesting article about travel jabs for small children - I think the advice is spot on.

mrs badger, you are very clever-that is such a huge help. i cant thank you enough. we will be staying with family in a modern house, and will be very careful if we eat out. i think that i will look into the tetanus, as i had already planned to do, and leave it at that.

would you mind telling me where you got your travel health info, did you find a good website?