denise m:Of course you hear all these horror stories too. I heard today that the person my friend knows personally, was traveling to Africa and went to get his required vacs, one of them being for Yellow Fever. The Dr. informed him there was a very slight risk in having the vaccine. There is alway a chance that you can contract the disease from a live vaccine. The guy asked what would happen if he did? The answer was he would die. There is no treatment. If this is bunk don't yell at me. I'm tired and off to bed. No time to check it out.
I've had a Yellow Fever vaccine (and FWIW was vaccinated for typhoid and Hep A at the same visit). It is one where you are injected with a live, attenuated virus. I understand it is not uncommon to react to it, but our college sends dozens of kids to Africa every year and I've never heard of anyone getting Yellow Fever, from the vaccine or otherwise. After the vaccine, I had a fever overnight, not sure how high b/c I was "sleeping" fitfully, like hallucinating and stuff so I never was in the right mind to get up, take my temp, and take something. By the end of the next day I felt fine. I can't remember if I called Health Services or not, I think I was going to just to be sure but then felt fine. Definitely would take 12 hours of higher temp and fitful sleep ANY day over actual Yellow Fever! Though even if you get Yellow Fever it *is* treatable, but where I was going there is only one Dr. per 200,000 people so the risk is not only getting it, but not having access to treat it. I was never told that I could die from the vaccine or even from the actual thing, it does sound a bit bunk to me.... I got sick while in Africa and was sick for several months after, went to the health clinic three times to monitor progress (or lack thereof). I did not have Yellow Fever or malaria. When I got sick in Africa I basically had diarrhea for 2.5 weeks, lost more than 10 lbs. Most people I was with were taking doxycycline daily for malaria, but I was on Malarone and often wonder if I'd been on that antibiotic, would I never have gotten so sick? Nothing we had was working until I found some antibiotics (cipro) in the med kit and took them because it was getting to the point where I was too exhausted to move. I swear within minutes I felt better! I took the entire round as directed and felt great the rest of the time there. Then a few days after coming home I felt sick again - flu symptoms. I was obligated to go to Health Services to make sure I didn't have malaria (there was a student on another program that got malaria). I don't know how or if they even test for malaria, but I guess my symptoms did not match. They said I had a virus, probably got it on the plane ride home since my body was already weak and unhealthy. I remember one day I was too exhausted to walk to my house from my college which was only 1/4 mile apart, someone had to come ten times as far to pick me up and bring me home to my bed. I basically had flu-like symptoms plus a viral eye infection from January until early June, even despite taking a week off school in mid-April and going to a beach house in Alabama with my family, but it was not Yellow Fever and not from the vaccine. We all got the vaccine and most people had no symptoms at all. My reaction was the worse, and that is the only time I've ever experienced any sort of reaction from a vaccine.
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