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 two major exceptions:

• Regional Distribution: Some countries have Yellow Fever disease only in part of the country, not the whole country. This can make it hard to decide if the vaccine is needed e.g. If you are just visiting Rio and Sao Paolo in Brazil, the Australian authorities will allow you to return to Australia without an immunisation certificate. This is because the disease has not been reported from those cities, and there are many travellers who only visit those cities and come directly home. If you are just visiting Machu Pichu and Cusco, you probably do not need the vaccine as the disease has not been reported there, but for that area you will need an exemption certificate to assist re-entry into Australia as there are not as many people visiting that area so the customs persons do not have special exemptions for that area.
• Medical Reasons: If you have certain medical issues, or take certain medication, these make the vaccine more dangerous to you so you can sometimes get a medical exemption certificate. You may need to discuss with The Travel Doctor whether you still want to go to those countries as some parts of the yellow fever zones carry a high risk of catching the disease, and deaths from Yellow Fever have occurred in unvaccinated tourists.

The Yellow Fever guidelines are quite complex and that is why generally the reception staff at travel medicine centres are not 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 designated yellow Fever centre to sort this out. You may be surprised that there is a lot of other information that The Travel Doctor will give you about how to stay healthy on your journey.