Cancer and travel vaccinations

Your GP, practice nurse or a travel health professional can explain what travel vaccinations you need and how to arrange them. If possible, you should speak to them at least 8 weeks before you are going to travel. Some vaccines must be given in advance, so they work as well as possible. Other vaccines involve having a few doses spread over several weeks or months.

You may also need to time the vaccinations around any cancer treatment you are having. Your cancer doctor can give you information about this. Some vaccinations are not safe to have during or soon after cancer treatment. Others are much more effective if you have them before cancer treatment starts.

Sometimes, it is not possible to have a vaccination at all. This may mean you cannot travel safely to some parts of the world.

It is also important to keep up to date with routine vaccinations. Doctors usually recommend that people with cancer have regular flu vaccination and a coronavirus (covid) vaccination.

Most vaccinations are given as an injection. If you have swelling in an arm (lymphoedema) or a risk of developing lymphoedema, avoid having injections in the affected limb if possible.

For information about travel vaccinations and the risk of infectious disease in other countries, visit:

• travelhealthpro.org.uk/countries if you live in England, Wales or Northern Ireland
• fitfortravel.nhs.uk/destinations if you live in Scotland.

Live vaccines use small amounts of a live virus or bacteria that has been weakened. They are also called attenuated vaccines. Live vaccines are not usually able to cause the infection. But they help your body develop white blood cells to protect against the infection. These are called antibodies.

If you have a weakened immune system, live vaccines may cause a serious or life-threatening infection. This means you must not have live vaccines if you:

• are having, or recently had, chemotherapy or radiotherapy
• have had an organ, stem cell or bone marrow transplant
• are having some types of targeted therapy or immunotherapy drugs
• had some types of targeted therapy or immunotherapy drugs in the past year
• are taking, or have recently taken, high doses of steroids or immunosuppressive medicines – these are drugs that weaken the immune system.

Live vaccines include:

• flu nasal spray (not the flu injection)
• measles, mumps and rubella (MMR)
• shingles
• oral typhoid capsule
• yellow fever
• some types of cholera vaccine
• dengue fever.

Your immune system improves gradually after you finish cancer treatment. How long this takes varies. It is important to ask your cancer doctor for advice. If you need live vaccines to travel, your cancer doctor can explain when it may be safe to have these.

Your travel clinic, GP surgery or pharmacist may need a letter from your cancer doctor confirming that you are not immunosuppressed and that it is safe for you to have live vaccines.

Some people have to avoid live vaccines for the rest of their lives. Always talk to your cancer doctor about whether you can have live vaccines if you have, or have had:

• lymphoma – this is cancer of the lymph nodes
• leukaemia – this is cancer of the white blood cells
• a cancer that is related to a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection.

Inactivated vaccines include:

• some types of cholera vaccine
• coronavirus (covid)
• diphtheria, tetanus and polio (a combined vaccine)
• flu injection
• hepatitis A
• hepatitis B
• human papilloma virus (HPV)
• Japanese encephalitis
• meningitis
• pneumonia
• rabies
• tick-borne encephalitis
• typhoid injection.