So the CDC recommends that people travelling to Belize be up-to-date on the following immunizations: Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Malaria, Typhoid, Tetnus, Diphtheria, and Measles. Luckily, because of my Kazakhstan work, I'm already current in all of that except for Malaria.
Malaria is a desease that is common in tropical areas, but not in Kazakhstan. Now I need to get vaccinated for it, so I went over to Occ Med and had them fill me in on all of this. They spent the better part of an hour telling me about all the different stuff I needed to be sure I was immune to, the specific drug I would want for Malaria (Chloroquine), how to take it, etc. But they wouldn't give me a prescription. Because the travel is not lab-sponsored. The doctor said there was a liability issue if I had a reaction to the medication. Great.
And this is the kicker: She said that, if I were to go down there and get malaria, they would treat me at Occ Med as per my lab medical insurance. So... basically, if I get sick and it affects my time at work, they'll spend time, money, and effort to get me better. But they won't sign a piece of paper to allow me to get the preventative vaccination.
On the other hand... one of the nurses said that if I didn't get a yellow fever vaccine, they wouldn't let me back into the country. A second nurse told me that I didn't need the yellow fever vaccine at all for Belize. So maybe it's best that I have to go to the Los Alamos Medical Center anyway...
I didn't get any vaccines to go to Belize. They let me back in the country. More to the point, people go there constantly to lie on the beach, and I can promise you they don't get yellow fever vaccines. 'Course, you're gonna be grunging in a swamp, so you should get that stuff, but the point is that customs ain't gonna know.
Since there is no vaccine for malaria, what exactly do these prophylactic measures do? Do they give you a lowered probability for getting the illness? And if you do manage to get sick are the quinine-related drugs supposed to cure you or merely reduce the presence of the parasite? I seem to recall that there was an illness, perhaps it was malaria, that could come back on its own years after you were first ill.