The Travel Doctor
Traveller's medical & vaccination centre
Health Alerts
Travel Doctor TMVC provides the latest health and travel alerts, including updates from the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Press the back button to return to the list of health alerts.
Hepatitis A in Europe
Tuesday, 27 January, 2009
This vaccine- preventable virus disease, causing inflammation of the liver, is spread by contaminated food or water or by person-to-person contact. Therefore within a good public health system as in European countries the risk of acquiring it is increasingly low, but in such a situation very few people have natural immunity and when the virus is brought in it spreads rapidly. Recently Latvia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have had serious outbreaks and many cases have been identified in Germany, Belgium and France. The virus had been brought in by unvaccinated travellers and the victims were all unvaccinated. The implications of the European experience are clear – all travellers to any country should be vaccinated against Hepatitis A.
