Are you, or any of your employees, heading to one of the big trade fairs overseas this year or next? Perhaps you work in horticulture or farming and are off to the Chengdu International Horticulture Exhibition in China, to learn all about sustainable, low-carbon conservation? Or are you travelling to Expo 2025 in Osaka and experiencing the theme of designing future society? Either way, have you organised vaccines and do you need them?
The answer to these questions is really to be found in your trip and you as an individual. What others do shouldn’t really concern you. The issue is that, for many decades, everyone has been bundled together and everything has been considered broadly. If there has been an infectious disease present in a country then ‘recommendations’ have come in, suggesting, quite vaguely, that you could ‘consider’ a particular vaccine.
Japanese Encephalitis and the need for vaccination
In the case of both Chengdu and Osaka, that is likely to be the Japanese Encephalitis vaccine. But do you really need it?
Whilst Japanese Encephalitis is a disease present in both China and Japan, it is not that much of a risk to those travelling to stay in major cities. The type of mosquito that spreads this disease is mainly found in rural areas and rice paddy fields. If you are not venturing to such areas, chances are you will not need the vaccination.
Rabies vaccination for animal-related activities
However, if you are exploring more than just Chengdu whilst in China, actually visiting some rural conservation projects to see things first-hand, perhaps you do. If you are visiting any farms and working around animals whilst there, you might also need a rabies vaccination.
Yellow Fever certification requirement in China
In addition, if you are heading to China via another country that has a risk of Yellow Fever transmission, or have transited for more than 12 hours through the airport of a country that carries a Yellow Fever transmission risk, you will need a Yellow Fever vaccination certificate.
Removing vaccine planning guesswork
If visiting Expo in Osaka, you may again be tempted to explore wider Japan, whilst in the land of cherry blossom and Mount Fuji. You might also wish to visit some businesses in other parts of the country. So how do you know where the Japanese Encephalitis vaccination might be required. What constitutes a ‘rural area’? Where in Japan are paddy fields found?
To take the guesswork out of all this travel health planning, you can simply turn to experts, who have years of clinical experience and have devoted it to devising the Pinpoint Travel Health platform. This processes huge amounts of data, relating to destinations, the very latest travel health advice from leading health authorities such as the World Health Organisation, and the interaction of vaccines and antimalarials with different medical conditions, to create Travel Health Briefs that are completely bespoke to the individual traveller commissioning them.
Bespoke vaccine advice
By ‘bespoke’, the advice on vaccinations and antimalarials that the Travel Health Brief provides, is tailored to individuals, according to their age, the exact and precise journey that they will undertake, the timing of the trip, the activities they will engage in and their medical history and medications.
The company is called Pinpoint, because it does all of this with pinpoint precision, examining health risks in very defined locations, right down to village or hotel level. It is a system fuelled by current data but managed day-to-day by clinical experts who can interpret the data and ensure that the picture presented makes sense and is continually updated. It is far from being just a software product handled by a web team.
Cost of a Travel Health Brief
A Travel Health Brief will cost you just £15 (inc VAT) and will do all of the travel risk management planning for you, in terms of vaccinations required for an overseas trip, not just to Chengdu or Osaka but anywhere in the world that you care to name. Just plot your trip out, using descriptions or digital visual planning tools, fill in other details, and you can have your entire itinerary analysed.
The resulting report will give you the confidence to travel either without vaccinations for Chengdu or Osaka, or book vaccinations knowing they are required and will not just be a case of spending a fair chunk of money unnecessarily. It will also show your travel insurer that you considered the risk in depth, so there should be no quibbling about this, if any sort of medical issue arise whilst you are overseas.
Why not discover what a useful and advanced tool this is, by ordering a Travel Health Brief today? Start the process via our home page.