Vaccinations for Tanzania
There is no requirement to have any vaccinations for visitors to Tanzania unless the climber will have recently visited, or spent more than 12 hours in transit through, a Yellow Fever risk area prior to entering Tanzania. This requirement will affect climbers en route to Arusha from Nairobi if they choose to overnight there. Yellow fever risk areas are shown in yellow below.
Commonly Recommended Vaccinations
The following vaccinations are commonly advised by general medical practioners and are best administered when detailed below but, again, they are not required by Tanzanian border authorities to be evidenced as having been administered. The list of recommended vaccinations for East African travel is updated regularly by the WHO. Your local healthcare practice will usually have an up to date list. Please consult them, if you subscribe to the practice of obtaining vaccines.
- Yellow fever - 10 days before travel
- Typhoid - 10 days before travel
- Hepatitis A - 2 weeks before travel
- Diphtheria - 3 months before travel
Anti-Malarial Prophylaxis for Tanzania
Areas below 1,800m altitude are considered chloroquine-immune malarial risk areas, (plasmodium falciparum). While your mountain phase will be above this altitude most visitors choose to obtain a course of anti-malarial treatment ahead of their departure. Prescription should be determined in consultation with your GP. Your medical history should be taken into account. For example, while Larium (mefloquine) works well for some, around 1 in 5 users suffer mild neuropsychiatric side effects (strange dreams, insomnia, unsteadiness, headaches, etc.) and may find doxycycline (100mg daily) to be a better choice.
We strongly recommend that if you opt for Larium you plan your dosage start date very carefully. Side effects are at their worst during the day that follows the evening on which the weekly dose is taken. Day two of the ascent, you'll have just slept at 3,000m and will be climbing to 3,700m. 75% of people on this day will suffer very mild symptoms of AMS. If your Larium dosage day happens to have fallen on the previous day, it will be difficult differentiating between what might be Larium side-effects and what is altitude induced. It would therefore be difficult properly to monitor how well you were acclimatizing. Best therefore would be to plan day six of the ascent to coincide with the weekly dose day. This would ensure that when Larium side-effects were felt the party would be well on its way down the mountain with AMS no longer a potential threat.
The course of treatment for Larium should begin 3 weeks before potential exposure to the Anopheles mosquito. A prescription is required. 10 tablets should cost around Β£25.
Please note that taking anti-malarials does not guarantee that you will not contract the disease, and some pharmacists claim that when trying to perform a diagnosis on a patient that has been taking anti-malarials it is more difficult to identify the cytoplasm and obtain an accurate diagnosis.
When You Think You Have Malaria
If a climber decides not to take anti-malarials and subsequently believes that he or she may have malaria they will be advised to visit the AICC Clinic in Arusha, 5 minutes walk from the Outpost Lodge, where a blood sample will be taken and a slide prepared. The pharmacist will drop a blue dye onto the blood sample. The dye adheres to the cytoplasm which can easily be seen under a microscope. Where a negative diagnosis is given the climber will be able to request to see the blood slide himself through the microscope, if desired. In the event of a positive diagnosis medication will be prescribed that is found to be very effective in the treatment of the disease.
The incidence of malaria amongst those visiting Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro is very low. People at greatest risk are those who spend time in densely populated areas of Arusha. Around 3 or 4 of our guides will usually contract malaria annually. Beyond having to forfeit no more than a single climb in order to convalesce, contracting malaria is not regarded as a serious matter as diagnoses are generally swift and accurate and the drugs prescribed effective.
The results obtained by using the calculator below should not be regarded as authoritative as this is not an objective means of measurement. The algorithms are simply based on a reasonably accurate correlation between known the performance of athletes on the beep test and their otherwise-measured pre-known VO2 max data. It is however, a very useful tool in our view, and renders a very acceptably accurate approximation of VO2 max.
While it is not necessary to undergo any specialised form of mountain specific Kilimanjaro training, we do strongly recommend that if youβre planning to climb Kilimanjaro, you should certainly give plenty of thought to how much time you can make available to train for Kilimanjaro.
Nearly all climbers who are not East African residents are required to obtain a visa for Tanzania. There are a few exceptions to this rule, with some countries having reciprocal visa-free relationships with Tanzania. To ensure that you have up to date information with respect to the requirements of passport holders of your nationality, we recommend using the Passport Index website.
We are sometimes asked whether we are able to obtain travel insurance on behalf of our clients. However, we have found over the years that climbers prefer to be in direct contact with the insurers, as in the event of a claim, there is quite a lot of passing information back and forth, and this is generally most easily managed directly, rather than via an intermediary.
If you choose to climb Kilimanjaro with us you will be required to purchase your flights yourself and to send us details in order to confirm precise dates for your climb, if you are not climbing on one of our scheduled climbs.
In our experience, the vast majority of prospective Kilimanjaro climbers would benefit from undertaking a well planned strategy of preparation before beginning an ascent of the worldβs largest freestanding mountain. The following are areas you are well advised to pay attention to:
When ascending mountains at high altitude, perhaps the most significant factor contributing to success, beyond acquiring safe and thorough acclimatisation, is the trekker's power to weight ratio. If you're heavy, you're going to struggle, whether the reason you're heavy is that you're carrying a lot of muscle, or your body is well equipped with unused "emergency reserves".
There is no requirement to have any vaccinations for visitors to Tanzania unless the climber will have recently visited, or spent more than 12 hours in transit through, a Yellow Fever risk area prior to entering Tanzania. This requirement will affect climbers en route to Arusha from Nairobi if they choose to overnight there. Yellow fever risk areas are shown in yellow below.