FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Yellow Fever Vaccination - Requirements for Africa
Old Jan 12, 2011, 6:16 am
  #15  
Michael
 
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Currently living in MAD
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Originally Posted by You want to go where?
You may want to read the INTERNATIONAL HEALTH REGULATIONS(1969) adopted by the Twenty-second World Health Assembly in 1969 and
amended by the Twenty-sixth World Health Assembly in 1973
and the Thirty-fourth World Health Assembly in 1981 before repeating that statement.

I did not read it thoroughly, but there are quite a few regulations on Yellow Fever in this document.

That said, if indeed the regulation exists, I doubt there is any enforcement mechanism.
I know about the IHR (though I've only skimmed it and haven't read it thoroughly - nor is it in my area of specialization), as well as a fair bit about public international law generally.

Generally, a convention such as this would permit state parties to apply certain measures, but not require them of the travellers themselves -- which is what the statement above said was the case. (Or at least, that's how I read it.)

A quick skim suggests that this is the case, per IHR Art 68:

Article 68
A health authority in an area where the vector of yellow fever is present may
require a person on an international voyage, who has come from an infected area and
is unable to produce a valid certificate of vaccination against yellow fever, to be
isolated until his certificate becomes valid, or until a period of not more than six days
reckoned from the date of last possible exposure to infection has elapsed, whichever
occurs first.
See? It doesn't say that the traveller must have a certificate of vaccination -- just that if the traveller doesn't have one, the receiving state may (not shall/must) take certain measures (isolating the traveller).
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