Tick Injections

[tomtom]

I'm going to Sweden in the Summer on the BOF Uppsala Tour and I have been recommended to have injections to become immunised against tick borne encephalitis. I believe you have to have at least two injections.
Has anyone had these before?
Is it worth it?
Did it cost anything?

Im going in 4 weeks - is it too late?

[LostAgain]

Hi Tom,

I'm no doctor of medicine, but we lived in Norway - Sweden for 4 yrs and never had any injections. Orienteered for the entire period and never heard or came across any problems. In fact I do not remember seeing too may ticks.

We're going to the O-ringen and were not thinking of doing anything different.

You have to assess the risks and make your own decision, unless of course you need to provide a vacination certificate to your coaches before they'll let you go

[King Penguin]

Some people see more attractive to ticks than others. Fratello counted 19 after TioMila but no-one else on the team found any.

[IanW]

There was a recent thread on this, which I started as I'm going to Czech in a couple of weeks to take part in the OF2008 event run in parallel with WOC. I now know most of the answers.

Firstly, there is a map of affected areas at

http://www.masta-travel-health.com/tickalert/map.html

which shows that it is present in the SE of Sweden. I believe it is spreading from central Europe.

Secondly, I failed to get it done for free. My health centre just told me to find a travel clinic. You need a course of 2 injections (with a further booster after a year). Each injection costs £50-£60. Cheapest I found in the Manchester area (High Lane) was £50.

http://www.totaltravelclinic.co.uk/contactus.htm

Ideally, there is supposed to be a 4 week gap between the 2 injections, but I think you can make do with less, so it isn't too late yet.

Is it worth it? I believe that there were 13,000 recorded cases in Europe last year and the death rate is about 3%. So, I decided it was! (for Czech anyway - which is a hotbed)

Ian

[Legolost]

I'm going to Sweden in the Summer on the BOF Uppsala Tour and I have been recommended to have injections to become immunised against tick borne encephalitis. I believe you have to have at least two injections.
Has anyone had these before?
Is it worth it?
Did it cost anything?

Im going in 4 weeks - is it too late?

Yes, my son has had his first injection. Apparently Uppsala in particular is listed as being affected by the relevant ticks. Other areas may not be so affected we were told.

We tried our GP first but the NHS do not cover this type of vaccination so we had to go private.

Nottingham MASTA clinic charged us £63.00 for the first injection. Two injections are required for immunity up to a year and they told us that the second injection has to be 1-3 months after the first. Three in total are required for longer term protection (3-5 years?).

As to whether it is worth it, that's a personal choice. I would not want someone to suffer the long terms health effects if they could be prevented. We were told that TBE is a nasty disease if not treated promptly.

Is there anything more important than your health?

We were very grateful to obtain a contribution from our club towards the cost of the vaccinations (and tour to Uppsala).

Have you approached your club?

[Blanka]

>>Tom

If you're a student you may be able to get the vaccinations through University Health Service - it cost me £36 per injection in 2006 which is a bit less than what people were quoting here (if you have some kind of private health insurance you may be able to claim it back anyway).

Having just had other injections done, I checked about TBE boosters - the course is as follows:

Day 0
Day 21
Then again ~9 months after the first injection.

If you want to keep being protected, you need another booster after 3 years.

>>IanW

The country's name is Czech Republic, not 'Czech'. If you want to use a single word 'Czechia' is acceptable, but to use 'Czech' on its own just shows ignorance/laziness!

[Tatty]

My son had one when he went on a BOF Junior tour to JWOC. I would never have lived with there being a problem. One veteran member of a nearby club suffered from this and is now in a pretty bad way. Definitely woth it

[IanW]

Blanka: The country's name is Czech Republic, not 'Czech'. If you want to use a single word 'Czechia' is acceptable, but to use 'Czech' on its own just shows ignorance/laziness!

Apologies - However, my daughter-in-law is a citizen of the Czech Republic and constantly just uses the abbreviation 'Czech' when referring to the country whilst speaking English. I assumed that this was normal/acceptable. I will henceforth tell her that she is ignorant/lazy.

Ian

[J.Tullster]

I had this done a couple of years ago for JWOC or a BOF tour or something and got it refunded by BOF so might be worth asking about this.

[Big Jon]

Definitely worth getting the injection if you're going to an encephalitis prone area. For those with long memories, Sarolta Monspart (Hungary) was the first non Nordic World Champion, she got encephalitis and nearly died - and it permanently affected her physically. The problem is growing in Eastern Europe and also spreading west and north.

[Kitch]

There was also the Danish international - Tomas Jensen ?? - who disappeared from the team - becoming very a agressive and changed character - eventually diagnosed with TBE. He did get back into the team after a few years.
There is clearly a spectrum of severity in how the disease will affect people.

weird that there is absolutely no mention of vaccination against TBE on the Tick Alert web pages.

I found some vaccination info here
http://www.patient.co.uk/showdoc/27000510/
(having just been to Estonia, and had 1 tick and wondering if my 20 year old vaccinations were still effective ...! not).

[PKJ]

You can recover sufficiently from Lyme disease to win a Wimbledon title, and reach another final ..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/ju ... on.tennis9

[Tatty]

Yes, you can recover, but then again, you might not

[Familytaxi driver]

Lyme Disease is also different to TBE.
The former is caused by a bacterium, TBE is a virus.

[PKJ]

I wasn't suggesting you shouldn't have the injections!!
I've googled a few reports, and this is generally reported as a 'good news' story, but with a lot of confusion about tick-borne diseases.. what causes them, their effect ...
But, it's not hard to imagine a bit of media hysteria about tick-borne diseases, especially TBE.