The Best-Kept Secret for Travel Vaccines? It's Hiding in Your Costco.
If you've ever tried to get travel vaccines through your regular doctor's office, you know the drill. Weeks of waiting for an appointment, a copay that makes your eyes water, and a doctor who might not even stock what you need for where you're headed. So when we started prepping our group for the Uganda and Rwanda adventure next June, we went looking for a better way, and we found it parked right next to the rotisserie chickens.
Costco's Full Service Travel Medicine Consultation Program, run through SafeGard, has genuinely made our lives easier. Here's how it works. You order the consultation online for $39.99 per traveler, no membership drama required for the health services. Within a few hours, you get an email with login instructions to a portal where you fill out your medical history and your itinerary. A board-certified travel medicine physician reviews everything and prescribes exactly what you need, whether that's yellow fever, Hepatitis A, typhoid, or malaria prevention. No generic checklist, no guesswork. Then you pick up your vaccines and prescriptions at a participating Costco Pharmacy near you.
For a trip like ours, where gorilla trekking permits and remote border crossings are part of the itinerary, having a physician who actually looks at where you're going and tailors the recommendations feels like a huge relief. Our travelers have been able to knock this out without taking a day off work or driving across town to a specialty travel clinic.
A few things worth knowing before you book. The program isn't available in every state, so check the list before you order. There's an age minimum that varies by state. Yellow fever vaccine is available through the program, which matters a lot for East Africa specifically. And you don't need a Costco membership to use the pharmacy or vaccine services.
If you've got a Lois & Claire trip coming up that requires vaccines, this is our official stamp of approval. Skip the scheduling headache and let Costco handle it.
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xoxo, Em & Jill
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