Rehab Medical

Health information

Travel vaccines

A pre-travel consultation is worth booking four to six weeks before you fly, because most vaccines need time to work and some are courses rather than single doses. Two things are compulsory rather than advisory and catch people out: Hajj requires a quadrivalent meningococcal ACWY certificate given at least ten days before arrival, and Egypt itself requires proof of yellow fever vaccination from anyone arriving from a country with transmission risk — including a transit of more than twelve hours.

When it cannot wait

Signs that mean today

These are not reasons to book an appointment. They are reasons to be seen now, or to call an ambulance on 123.

  • Fever within three months of returning from a malaria area — that is malaria until proven otherwise, and it can kill within days. Go to be tested the same day and say where you travelled.
  • Any animal bite, scratch or bat contact abroad — rabies prevention is time-critical and started immediately, not after you fly home.
  • Bloody diarrhoea, persistent vomiting, or signs of dehydration during or after travel.
  • Calf pain or swelling, or breathlessness, after a long flight.

When to book

Reasons to be seen

  • You are travelling in the next two months, especially to sub-Saharan Africa, South or South-East Asia, or on Hajj or Umrah.
  • You are pregnant, immunosuppressed, or travelling with a baby or an elderly parent — that changes which vaccines are possible and which are not.
  • You take regular medication and will cross time zones, fast, or be somewhere without reliable refrigeration.
  • You need a stamped certificate for a visa or for an employer — bring the exact wording of the requirement.

What a visit looks like

What a visit for this involves

  • 25–30 minutesClinic visitAt the clinic, unhurried
  • 20 minutesVideo consultationFrom anywhere in Egypt
  • 15 minutesFollow-upAfter a recent visit, same complaint

In the room

What the doctor checks

  1. Your itinerary read properly — country, rural or urban, season, length of stay and what you will be doing. Two weeks in a city hotel and two months in a village are different risks entirely.
  2. The split between what is legally required for entry or for Hajj, and what is medically advisable — they are not the same list, and only one of them will stop you at a border.
  3. Malaria advice if it applies: which tablets, when to start and — the part people forget — that they continue after you get home.
  4. A written record and a stamped certificate where one is needed, plus a letter for any medicine you carry.

Come prepared

What to bring

  • Your travel dates and full itinerary, including transits — a twelve-hour layover can trigger a certificate requirement on its own.
  • Every vaccination record you already have, so we do not repeat what you have had.
  • Your regular medicines, and any condition that affects your immune system.

Next step

Tell us what's happening and we'll arrange the right kind of visit.

Message the clinic on WhatsApp. We reply with the times that are free and what the visit costs, before you agree to anything.

Book on WhatsApp

At home

Between visits

  • Photograph every certificate and keep the paper original separately — a lost yellow fever card can mean quarantine on arrival.
  • Food and water care prevents far more illness on a trip than any vaccine does. Bottled or boiled, peeled or cooked, and be sceptical about ice.
  • Tell any doctor you see in the following year where you have been. A travel history changes the diagnosis more often than people expect.

Before you write

Questions patients ask

Written and clinically reviewed by Dr. Rehab Ahmed, MBBCh, Ain Shams University · Diploma in Family Medicine. Last reviewed August 2026.

What this page is based on

This page is general information written by the practice. It is not a diagnosis and does not replace seeing a doctor. In an emergency, call 123.

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