On the first floor of a stately gray building at Civic Center is the Adult Immunization and Travel Clinic, whose health care providers are available to Bay Area travelers and the general public. Inside, the nurse’s window perfectly frames the San Francisco City Hall rotunda across from Grove Street.
Since 1999, the Adult Immunization and Travel Clinic, a service provided by the city’s Department of Public Health, has offered travelers individual medical assessments. For $70, travel nurses review itineraries to determine if vaccines and other forms of preventive care are necessary, and they also check if they need to administer prescribed medication.
Instead of relying on internet sources or brushing up on WebMD posts, travelers can receive personal assistance from the clinic’s nurses, who can help them understand which immunizations are important to receive before visiting another country.
Nicole Copeland, a travel nurse at AITC for nearly 24 years, told SFGATE how she once had a patient who went to the pharmacy to receive a yellow fever vaccine after determining on their own that they needed it. Copeland reviewed the itinerary and saw that the country hadn’t had a yellow fever outbreak in over a year, rendering the vaccine somewhat moot…