vaccinations, malaria and all that fun stuff
So on Monday I toddled along to my local GP to get my recommended vaccinations for the places I’ll be visiting and ‘medical advice’. Turned out to be rather a waste of time as the website the nurse was using to ‘advise’ me had gone down. What is the point of me taking time off work to go to the doctors when all they’re going to do is read out bits from a website? Surely I could do that myself. Anyway I was asked to make another appointment (hopefully the website will be working next time?!) and at least I insisted on getting the Hepatitis A booster there and then so it didn’t feel like a total waste of my time…
Turns out I already had all the free vaccinations I could get when I went to Thailand last year. All the others now recommended to me are not available on the NHS and therefore shockingly expensive:
- Hepatitits B - around £40 per dose and 3 doses needed over 6 months for a total price of £120. I have decided not to bother with this one in the hopes that I will not need medical attention involving dirty needles…
- Rabies - around £45 a dose and again, 3 doses needed but over the space of 1 month, resulting in a total price of around £135. I am lothe to pay for this as it sounds a bit pointless anyway - apparently if you are bitten by a suspect animal you need to go and get more injections anyway. However the vaccination gives you a few days to get to a hospital, whereas without it you have 24 hours. As I will be trekking in remote parts of Nepal (and possibly Tibet) which are known for packs of wild dogs, the sensible option would be to get the vaccination. Oh but the money! it hurts me!
- Japanese Encephalitis - around £45 a dose with the 3 doses needed over a month costing around £135 (why am i starting to get the feeling they split these into multiple injections just to charge you more?). Apparently this is fairly rare and usually only a risk if you’re going to be around animals/staying on farmland. Sounds like another candidate for just not bothering hmm? However it’s recommended to people staying in Asia for longer than a month and god knows what I’ll be doing and where I’ll be staying when I’m traipsing around SE Asia. Also if you contract this, there’s a good chance you’ll either die or get brain damage. Oh and there’s no treatment.
So yeah. If I were to get all these vaccinations, it would cost me somewhere close to £400. And I’m probably going to get the second 2 as I’ve now spent so long thinking about it, I’m starting to think it’s tempting fate if I don’t get them. Makes me wonder why I’m giving away half my paycheck in taxes every month when I’m never even ill..
Then there’s the issue of Malaria tablets. I was really not keen on taking these as nearly everyone I know has had a bad reaction from them. However I also don’t want to get malaria so… The nurse recommended me Malarone, which I found out after I got home and did a bit of research, costs around £2.50 a tablet. One tablet per day for 2-3 months in asia = a lot of money. Are these people on commission or something?? So I have decided to go with the much cheaper doxycycline, coming in at around 15p per tablet. Much better! However this has the most common side effect of making your skin more sensitive to sunlight. I swear someone up there is laughing at me.
So anyway, my last resort for now is to see if it’s a case of ‘who you know’ and my tenuous connections can get me some vaguely cheaper vaccinations. Otherwise I guess I’m just going to have to suck it up and pay (oh but that money would buy me a lovely sub-notebook computer!). Well either that or risk dying horribly - whatever!
