Ah, needles: one of life's inescapable little tortures (or pleasures, if you're a masochist).
I'm planning a short trip to Africa later in the year so made an appointment with Dr Joe to work out what jabs I needed to stop me getting ebola and all the other fun stuff they have and we don't. Making an appointment is super easy, hit their website and you can do it in seconds. The one thing they don't tell you when you do this is the cost of consultation, which is $140... you only find that out at the end of your appointment. My travel partner came with me to the appointment, so Dr Joe got $140 from each of us for 30mins work.
He did know his stuff, and seemed pretty keen to load us up with as much protection as possible, which was both reassuring (don't want to be coming home with any surprises) but you do wonder how much of this stuff you actually need (he talked us into taking an extra 'all-purposes medical kit' with antibiotics, anti-diarrhoea, and headache medicine for $60 with a little bit of scare-mongering, not sure if this is absolutely necessary or a high-margin add-on).
Look, it ain't cheap - my appointment was $140, and 2 injections and a bunch of malaria tablets and meds were another $560 - but can you really put a price on peace of mind? In this case, yes you can, and it's $700. read more