Travel with no VAX?

[winwin]

Does anyone have info on traveling to the Caribbean without VAX?  Just curious.  We have an amazing opportunity to travel (paid for by someone else) and I'm worried that I should stick to Florida?  (we live in Northern Ontario, Canada).

Any ideas or observations?

Thanks,

Erin

[Tres]

I am wondering the exact same thing.

[bluedaisy]

What are you planning to do int he Carribean?  If you will be at tourist areas, I would definitely not worry about it and go!  It sounds like fun.

Check the WHO page for the country you are going to and you can get the country's rates for the different diseases.

I took my unvaxed dd to visit my dh's family in Kenya for 3 months from when she was 17 - 20 months.  I did tons of research before I went and I have lived in Kenya so I knew the area where we were staying and I wasn't really worried.  The most likely disease she would have caught was measles, and I'm not worried about her catching that.  There had also been a small polio outbreak but it was in areas where we were not going and there had been no cases reported in over 6 months by the time we arrived.

I think if you look at the actual statistics you will find that their risk of catching anything serious is very low, and extremely low if you will be staying in tourist areas.

I would go and take your unvaxed kids and have fun!

[winwin]

We're planning to go to an all inclusive resort, not my usual mode of travel, but what I need right now.

I don't have time to look up all the stats as I did when I decided to delay, or perhaps never, vaccinate.

I'm thinking we'll likely be fine whereever we go.

Thanks for your story about Kenya, that helps me a lot. 

[amnesiac]

There are some travel related threads here you might find of interest: http://www.mothering.com/community/forum/list/241

Generally speaking, I don't think I'd be overly concerned about diseases covered by vaccines any more in Caribbean AI resorts than I would be in Canada or the U.S.

[mattemma04]

I took my dd to Turkey when she was 14mo.We spent a month there.Dd was still bfing.She had a fever for a few days,but was otherwise fine.She recently went back at age 11,and other than stomach upset(bad food?) she was fine. I think there was more of a disease risk on all the planes than our actual time in Turkey!

[Fyrestorm]

We took DD to St. Martin and St. Croix when she was 4 mo.  We took her to Egypt at 6 mo.  She's now 6YO and still has not had any vaccines.  The worry for me was that we were taking a 13 hour flight in a tin can during fku season.  I never gave vaccine available diseases a second thought

[JBaxter]

We have have been to Punta Cana and Costa Rica with unvaxed kids