Travel Medicine and Travel Vaccines

Over the past couple of years, the area of travel medicine, particularly travel vaccination, has been expanding quite rapidly across Australian practices, with more and more clinics offering pre-travel advice and travel-specific vaccines such as yellow fever.

It's important to keep in mind, that travel medicine is a specialty area, and that all clinicians should undertake additional training as well as ongoing CPD updates, to make sure they are practicing in line with best-practice advice that is current and promotes patient safety according to their particular risks.

Travel vaccines are acquired and sold privately in General Practice and no Government support or funding is provided to cover their cost or in the event of a cold chain or vaccine fridge temperature breach.

There is limited information on travel vaccines as part of the Australian Immunisation Handbook. So if your practice is considering offering travel medicine advice and vaccines, it is expected that you will have access to other relevant resources, such as travel alerts, vaccination recommendations or requirements for different destinations and patient education resources.

Travel Vaccines in General Practice

Useful websites

Australian Immunisation Handbook:

Guidelines and information on vaccines available in Australia.

Center for Disease Control & Prevention:

Information on what vaccines are required depending on travel destination.

WHO -World Health Organisation travel health

Provides information on current health risks for travelers.

Smart traveller

Travel vaccination advice and guidance for patients.

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