Immunization necessary for a trip to South America

For any extensive trip that we make, there is always a lot of anticipation and preparation. We are going through this phase now. We received our tickets from the shipping line, and we were advised to see our physician for any immunization that is required. Before seeing our physician, I checked with the web to see what was being recommended there for immunization. for South America.They simply advised that we should have shots for Hepatitis A&B, Yellow Fever, Typhoid and Rabies if we will be in contact with animals.

I phoned our physician and asked to have these shots and was told that they do not give these shots and that I should go to the Windsor Travel and Immunization Clinic. They gave me a phone number to call. When I phoned, I was told that I would have to make an appointment which I did for both of us on Monday, 22nd of August. When we went for the appointment, the nurse had to know precisely all the places that we would be visiting and the dates and time of all our shore excursions. She also had to know details of our past medical history. She took all this imformation and inputted this information into a special program on her computer. Being interested in computer programs, I asked if I could access this program on my computer. She said this is a special program that was quite costly to buy for their travel clinic. As my wife, Dorothy had another appointment, we could not wait till the nurse imputted all the information into the computer and rescheduled another visit yesterday ie Friday 2nd of September for our necessary shots.

On the second visit the nurse had prepared a lot of information on each country that we planed to visit and all the diseases that could be picked up in the different areas in each country. She gave us a copy of what she found on each country. She recommended that we have shots for Hepatitis A&B, Yellow Fever and Typhoid. She did not recommend Rabies shots as they require a series of shots and could be hard on the body to take. However she did suggest that we verify if the ship we are on can give treatment for Rabies. Otherwise we would have to be immediately flown back to Canada or the USA. She also gave us medication that we should take before our trip and if we may have diarrhea during our trip.

Now these shots are not covered by our Ontario Hospital Insurance Plan (OHIP) so we had to pay for these shots. This amounted to $670.00 for the both of us. These shots were once paid by our medical insurance but now are not included in our plan. I guess the Government reasoned that if we had the money to pay for a trip to another country, we could afford to pay for the immuniztion that was necessary.