Opportunities for children to travel abroad have increased, mainly because of the convenience of modern air travel. Students going abroad on group trips and children traveling with families need counseling and immunization for preventable infections. Also, with the United States experiencing a peak era of immigration, the number of recent immigrants visiting their countries of origin has increased. The immunization status of their children should be assessed well in advance of planned trips so that routine vaccines and travel vaccines can be administered in a timely manner.

Pediatricians must be familiar with the many considerations of indications, dosing and route of administration, and adverse effects for travel vaccines for children, as well as age-specific recommendations. This article discusses the use of routine vaccines in traveling children and immunization against enteric fever, rabies, Japanese encephalitis, yellow fever, and cholera. Hepatitis A and meningococcal infections are mentioned only briefly because they are covered in detail in other articles in this issue. Other common travel medicine issues, such as traveler's diarrhea and malaria prevention, are beyond the scope of this article. It is hoped that specific listings of printed and on-line resources for travel medicine information are useful.