Travel Health Service

Planning a trip abroad?
Staying healthy while you travel is important. Our travel clinic can help! We offer free travel consultations to assess your health risks and recommend the necessary vaccinations.

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Overview

If you’re travelling abroad, one of our nurses can provide you with a free travel risk assessment, including advice on health issues, what vaccinations you need, and safety abroad.

What we offer

  • Free travel consultations: A nurse will discuss your trip itinerary and advise you on health issues, vaccinations, and safety measures.
  • Travel vaccinations: We can administer a variety of travel vaccines, including diphtheria, tetanus, polio, typhoid, hepatitis A and B, Japanese encephalitis, meningitis, rabies, and tick-borne encephalitis (subject to availability).
  • Administration of any travel vaccines that the NHS provides for free. 

Further Travel Vaccine Information

If you’re visiting a malarious area 

If you're going somewhere with malaria, we can advise you on recommended precautions, but do not prescribe anti-malarial medications. These are available from pharmacies with a Malaria service.

Book into the travel clinic

  • Email our reception team at syicb-sheffield.universityhealthservice@nhs.net to request a travel health assessment form.
  • Complete and return the form at least 8 weeks before your trip.
  • Once we receive your form, we will contact you to schedule your initial travel consultation.
  • After the consultation, you can pay for any required vaccinations online through our Online Store.

We recommend scheduling your consultation well in advance of your trip to ensure you have enough time to receive all necessary vaccinations.

Sedative prescribing for fear of flying

UHS does not prescribe sedatives for fear of flying. This policy decision has been made by our GP Principles and is adhered to by all prescribers working in the practice. The reasons for this can be found below:

  1. Diazepam is a sedative, which means it makes you sleepy and more relaxed. If there is an emergency during the flight it may impair your ability to concentrate, follow instructions and react to the situation. This could have serious safety consequences for you and those around you.
  2. Sedative drugs can make you fall asleep, however when you do sleep it is an unnatural non-REM sleep. This means you won’t move around as much as during natural sleep. This can cause you to be at increased risk of developing a blood clot (DVT) in the leg or even the lung. Blood clots are very dangerous and can even prove fatal. This risk is even greater if your flight is greater than four hours.
  3. Whilst most people find benzodiazepines like diazepam sedating, a small number have paradoxical agitation and in aggression. They can also cause disinhibition and lead you to behave in a way that you would not normally. This could impact on your safety as well as that of other passengers and could also get you into trouble with the law.
  4. According to the prescribing guidelines doctors follow (BNF) Benzodiazepines are contraindicated (not allowed)  in phobia. Your doctor is taking a significant legal risk by prescribing against these guidelines. They are only licensed short term for a crisis in generalised anxiety. If this is the case, you should be getting proper care and support for your mental health and not going on a flight.
  5. Diazepam and similar drugs are illegal in a number of countries. They may be confiscated or you may find yourself in trouble with the police.
  6. Diazepam stays in your system for quite a while. If your job requires you to submit to random drug testing you may fail this having taken diazepam.

We appreciate that fear of flying is very real and very frightening. A much better approach is to tackle this properly with a Fear of Flying course run by the airlines and we have listed a number of these below.

Easy Jet Fearless Flyer Course Tel: 0203 8131644

British Airways Flying with Confidence Tel: 01252 793250

Virgin Flying without Fear Tel: 01423 714900