Childhood vaccinations ‘key’ to discuss during travel health consultations

Conversations around childhood and lifelong vaccinations must always be included as part of travel health consultations – particularly amid schedule interruptions and emerging disease outbreaks, a nurse specialist has urged.

Travel health nurse specialist Yvonne Gibney was speaking during a virtual event hosted by Nursing in Practice and our sister title Pulse focused on vaccinations and immunisations when she explained the importance of checking patient’s vaccination history.

Ms Gibney, who has worked across travel health and primary care for more than 35 years, provided an overview of emerging risks, vaccine-preventable diseases and UK travel trends at the conference that was held online earlier this month.

She outlined the rise in vector borne diseases such as chikungunya and dengue, exacerbated by climate change and environmental impacts, and its spread into Europe, including locally acquired outbreaks in Italy, Spain and France – popular destinations for UK travellers.

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‘In all my years of travel health – 10 years ago, we never used to speak about dengue or chikungunya unless there had been a rare outbreak,’ said Ms Gibney.

‘Now it’s part of our everyday risk assessments for our travellers, and we’re seeing these outbreaks of disease in areas where we’ve never seen them before.’

In addition to emerging trends, Ms Gibney discussed the opportunity presented during travel health consultations to discuss lifelong vaccinations with patients, including MMR and flu.

Children may have missed childhood vaccinations because they were declined by parents or because of interruptions to vaccination schedules such as in Ukraine amid the conflict there, and as seen during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Patients could also be travelling to countries during flu seasons that are different to that of the UK’s, and so flu vaccination history should also be considered.

‘I’m a great believer in the fact that while our focus is always on travel health, we have to include in travel health the lifelong vaccinations,’ said Ms Gibney.

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She added: ‘I just want to stress here how important it is that we always look at, has the traveller completed their childhood vaccinations? Do they need to take a flu vaccine? And MMR is particularly important at this point because of the international outbreaks of MMR.

‘At the moment, there’s a large outbreak in Washington, in Ohio, in Utah, and also in South Carolina, which is a popular tourist destination for American tourists.

‘And also if someone is on a cruise and they are going to be traveling to locations where it is actually flu season, or boarding the ship where it is flu season, or encountering crew that have boarded from an area where there’s flu season, it is really important to check that they’ve had their flu vaccination as well.’

She added: ‘Definitely childhood, lifelong vaccinations should always be included as part of a travel health consultation.’

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Ms Gibney’s session also focussed on what vaccinations are available and when to use them, in relation to travel health, and the role of primary care in early risk assessment and patient education.

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