You definitely need it if you are visiting Iguazu Falls

There are two reasons to have the vaccine:

• To prevent illness
• To allow you to enter certain countries

Yellow Fever is a serious and potentially fatal disease, but sometimes you need to have the vaccine so you can get a certificate that will allow you to enter certain countries.

The reason the World Health Organisation has advised restrictions on travel is because the disease Yellow fever could easily spread out of Africa and South America into Asia and other parts of the world. This would be a serious problem.

The areas of the world known as "endemic zones" either:

• have the disease now, or
• have had the disease yellow fever at some time in the past

Generally everyone visiting these zones need to be vaccinated, with one major exception:

• Medical Reasons: If you have certain medical issues, or take certain medication, the risk from vaccination may be greater than the risk from the disease so your travel doctor may decide to issue you a medical exemption certificate. In that situation, it may be wise to review your travel itinerary; death from Yellow Fever has occurred in unvaccinated tourists.

The Yellow Fever guidelines are not straightforward. This is why reception staff at travel medicine centres are not generally able to give you detailed information about whether you need to have the vaccine or not. You need to make an appointment to see one of the Travel Doctors at a specially approved Yellow Fever centre to sort this out. You may be surprised that they can give you a lot of other information about how to stay healthy on your journey.