Is yellow fever vaccination required for African trip?

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The mosquito-borne virus infects around 200,000 people worldwide each year (Getty)

Q My son will shortly be travelling to Zambia with his girlfriend, and although they hadn’t needed a vaccination for yellow fever to get into Zambia from the UK, they are nipping into Botswana for two days and the question has arisen as to whether they will need to produce evidence of this vaccination to get into Botswana from Zambia. They are aware that there is a yellow fever risk in some areas of Zambia (which they are not visiting), and are now unsure as to how they stand on this. It is proving difficult to get a clear answer.

Lois S

A While your son and his girlfriend should consult either their GP or a specialist travel medicine service, I can gladly offer some background.

Yellow fever is a nasty mosquito-borne virus which is prevalent in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. It infects around 200,000 people worldwide each year. Victims can start to recover after a few days of flu-like symptoms, but around one in four relapses with potentially fatal consequences. Annually, about 30,000 people die of the disease.

The excellent travel health website FitForTravel.NHS.net shows a risk of transmission in all of West Africa from Senegal southwards, stretching across the continent to include Angola, the DRC, Burundi and Uganda – as well as the eastern half of Kenya.

Botswana is shown as “vaccine not recommended,” as is the eastern half of Zambia. For the western half of Zambia, FitForTravel says “vaccine generally not recommended”. While long-stay visitors working in rural areas might want to get a yellow fever jab, short-term travellers are not because of the potential adverse effects of the vaccine: one in three recipients may get a headache, muscle pain and a mild fever.

Botswanan frontier officials should not demand a yellow fever certificate, except in the unlikely event that there is a sudden upsurge of cases in Zambia.

But a yellow fever vaccination is valid for life. So if they are likely to be travelling to other countries in future – including the entire Amazon basin, most of Colombia and Brazil plus Trinidad & Tobago – then they might as well get the jab now and take the certificate just in case.

Every day, our travel correspondent, Simon Calder, tackles a reader’s question. Just email yours to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder