Plenty of people travel without any or all of these and many avoid them all or at least have a fun story to tell because of it, but my vivid imagination (for bad things) combined with a novel's worth of leaflets on various reasons to be sick and a fear of illness lead me to cover all bases, at a cost of £347 - almost enough to seek out a dog/bat/mosquito to get my money's worth.
It's quite remarkable that we can plan a trip covering a quarter of the world's countries, turn up at our doctor's surgery and over a few weeks be injected with or swallow small amounts of their various exotic diseases, many for free, and proceed with one less hindrance around the world. It's also hard to comprehend how simple the preventatives are and how many millions of people still die yearly.
