The Japanese need travel vaccinations.

At a travel clinic in Kathmandu we reviewed the vaccination records from March 1997 to March 1998 for all travelers to developing countries like Nepal, for two important vaccines, namely, typhoid and hepatitis A. These travelers visited the clinic for various medical problems. One of the reasons for doing this study was that in previous years we saw a disproportionate number of Japanese travelers with hepatitis A, who had not taken the hepatitis A vaccine or immune gamma globulin for prevention of this illness. We hypothesized, therefore, that one of the reasons that Japanese patients visiting our clinic had higher rates of hepatitis A was because they were not vaccinated against this disease. There were 765 tourists for that time period out of which about 10% were Japanese. The rest were Americans, British, Israelis, Canadians, Australians, Danish and a small miscellaneous group from other countries.