Visiting Family in Pakistan? The Travel Vaccine and Polio Certificate Guide for VFR Travellers

Why does "visiting family" change your vaccine risk?

Travel health services use the term VFR, visiting friends and relatives, for a specific reason: this group is consistently found to carry higher rates of travel infections like typhoid and hepatitis A than people on a package holiday to the same country. It isn't about the destination being riskier. It's about how the trip is usually spent. VFR travellers tend to stay longer, stay with family rather than in hotels, eat and drink the way local residents do, and have closer day-to-day contact with the local population. And because the trip feels like going home rather than "travelling", many people skip the pre-travel health check altogether.

A family came in to see me last month, mum, dad and two children under ten, three weeks before flying out to Lahore for a wedding and a six-week stay with grandparents. None of them had ever had a travel vaccine. "We're not really tourists," the dad said, "we're just going home." That's exactly the mindset that puts VFR families at higher risk: the destination is familiar, so the health preparation gets skipped.

What vaccines are recommended for Pakistan?

According to TravelHealthPro's Pakistan country guidance, the vaccines most travellers should consider are:

• Hepatitis A: recommended for all previously unvaccinated travellers, spread through contaminated food and water. See our hepatitis A vaccine page for dosing and protection.
• Typhoid: recommended for most travellers, and TravelHealthPro specifically flags this as important for those "visiting friends and relatives". See our typhoid vaccine page.
• Routine boosters: make sure the whole family is up to date with the UK schedule, particularly MMR/MMRV and the combined diphtheria-tetanus-polio booster.
• Rabies (pre-exposure): worth discussing, particularly if you're travelling with children, who are more likely to approach street or family-owned dogs, or if you're heading to rural areas. See our rabies vaccine page.

Exactly which of these you need, and in what combination, depends on your itinerary, how long you're staying, and your own health history. That's what the consultation is for.

The polio exit certificate rule most people don't know about

This is the detail that catches long-stay VFR travellers out, because it isn't about entering Pakistan, it's about leaving it. Wild poliovirus type 1 is still circulating in Pakistan, with 30 human cases recorded in 2025 and further positive environmental samples reported into early 2026.

If you intend to stay in Pakistan for four weeks or more, you may need to show proof of polio vaccination on an International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis (ICVP) when you leave the country, given between 4 weeks and 12 months before your departure from Pakistan. If you can't produce one, you may be vaccinated with oral polio vaccine at the airport before you're allowed to fly out. Full detail is available on the official ICVP polio factsheet.

For a six-week family visit, that usually means having your polio-containing vaccine and ICVP arranged before you leave the UK, timed so it still falls within that 4-week-to-12-month window on the day you eventually fly home from Pakistan. Get this wrong and you're negotiating an unplanned vaccination at departure, with young children, at the airport, which is exactly the situation you want to avoid.

Shorter trips under four weeks don't carry the exit certificate requirement, but because wild poliovirus is still active in the country, everyone travelling to Pakistan, regardless of trip length, should have their routine polio vaccination up to date before they go.

What about the children?

A pre-travel appointment is a good opportunity to check the whole family's routine vaccination record against the UK schedule, not just tick off the travel-specific ones. Measles is circulating in the UK again, and travel to and from busy family gatherings is exactly the kind of setting where it spreads, so it's worth confirming MMR status is current, see our guide to measles and the MMR vaccine if you're not sure where your child stands. If you don't have your children's vaccination records to hand, we can usually work through what's likely still needed based on age and the standard schedule.

When should I book, and what should I expect?

Aim to book four to six weeks before you fly. Hepatitis A and typhoid can both be given as a single dose in most cases, but building in time means we can also fit routine boosters and sort the polio certificate timing if your stay is a month or more. Bring your itinerary, including how long you're staying and roughly where, plus any existing vaccination records for everyone travelling.

If your trip is coming up sooner than that four-to-six-week window, get in touch anyway. We're open seven days a week from 7:30am to 10pm, and same-day appointments are often possible, book online or call us and we'll fit in what we realistically can before you fly.

Frequently asked questions