Reminder: Yellow fever pre-vaccination checklist
Important reminder for UK Yellow Fever Vaccination Centres
Before administering a YF vaccine, an individual risk assessment should be carried out by a qualified and trained health professional with experience in the benefit/risk evaluation of YF vaccine [1]. This is important to establish if there is a significant and unavoidable risk of YF infection and that there are no contraindications to YF vaccine The Commission on Human Medicine's Expert Working Group report recommended that this assessment should be approached in a standardised way, using a checklist.
In accordance with this recommendation, the National Travel Health Network and Centre (NaTHNaC) and Public Health Scotland (PHS) produced an interactive PDF yellow fever (YF) pre-vaccination checklist.
The NaTHNaC/PHS YF pre-vaccination checklist is a tool designed to:
- help the healthcare professional risk assess a person's suitability for YF vaccination.
- it does not replace the broader individual risk assessment in the travel health consultation. - be completed by the person travelling in advance of, or during, the consultation.
- but must be carefully reviewed by the advising healthcare professional as part of a shared decision-making process for YF vaccination.
Health professionals must refer to Yellow fever: the green book, chapter 35 for current guidance on the administration of YF vaccine in the United Kingdom. This includes the use of the NaTHNaC/PHS YF pre-vaccination checklist. Advice may differ from that in vaccine manufacturers' Summary of Product Characteristics (SmPC), when this occurs, the clinical recommendations in the green book (which are based on current expert advice received from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation) should be followed.
Sanofi have a Direct Healthcare Professional Communication about the checklist they have developed (this is separate to our pre-vaccination checklist described above). The Sanofi checklist reflects the contraindications and precautions listed in the SmPC.
Advice for health professionals
Staff working in designated yellow fever vaccination centres (YFVCs) should ensure they are using an up-to-date version of the YF pre-vaccination checklist.
The checklist and instructions for using the interactive PDF document can be found on TravelHealthPro and the Yellow Fever Zone.
Resources
Reporting adverse events
Information on management and reporting of suspected adverse events or inadvertent administration following YF vaccination
NaTHNaC Training Portal
Yellow fever eLearning and more
Yellow Fever vaccination recommendation maps
