It helps to have support, help and advice when looking to protect yourself on holiday, and the best place to find it is at a local travel health clinic.
Not only do they have over-the-counter and prescription medications such as antimalarials that you may need depending on where you are planning to go, but they can also provide up-to-date advice about outbreaks and diseases you may need to protect yourself from.
This is particularly important as due to a range of biological, environmental and social reasons, some diseases that were previously thought to be wiped out have made rather concerning returns.
One of the biggest of these is the resurgence of measles in the United States, which has seen over a thousand cases in the first half of 2025 and discussions have been made that this could lead to the end of the USA’s elimination status for the highly contagious disease.
This could have significant implications for people both travelling to and from America, but to understand why, it is important to know what epidemiologists mean by “elimination”.
What Is Eliminated Status?
The goal of infection control is to eliminate diseases, but this should not be confused with eradication.
The eradication of a disease is when there are no cases of a disease found in the wild in the entire world. The only human disease which has successfully been wiped out in this way is smallpox, which was one of the greatest successes in the history of public health.
Elimination, on the other hand, is more regionally specific and is where a specific disease is no longer endemic (or naturally found) to a particular region, or the risks of infection or serious illness are considered to be close to zero.
Cases may be reported in a region where it has been eliminated, but they are the result of infected people travelling to the country or returning from a region where the disease is endemic.
Rabies, for example, has been eliminated in the United Kingdom, much of continental Europe and many other island nations through careful infection control, vaccination of domestic animals and monitoring of wild animals.
The World Health Organisation, which oversees disease control efforts globally, has multiple definitions of elimination, but the two most important of these are Elimination of Transmission (EOT) and Elimination as a Public Health Problem (EPHP).
The former is the more classical definition of elimination, where the disease is wiped out domestically for a certain timeframe defined by WHO (typically between 12 and 36 months depending on the disease).
The latter is somewhat more flexibly defined depending on what is known about a particular disease, how it spreads and how it is managed. In some cases, infection is unavoidable, but minimising symptoms can be far more important.
How Can A Wiped Out Disease Come Back?
One of the reasons why vaccinations are so important besides protecting yourself is that certain contagious diseases could potentially be brought back to the UK and become endemic again without careful vigilance.
Part of this is that certain diseases such as measles are extremely contagious and can spread quickly in unvaccinated populations. This is believed to be a causal factor in why the USA has become particularly vulnerable in recent years to outbreaks as MMR vaccination statistics have fallen in certain regions.
Other aspects that can affect the proliferation of disease are environmental; as certain countries experience hotter climates, diseases have been spreading further north, meaning that more countries may need the protection that comes from travel vaccination.
The final major part is social in nature, as there needs to be as much awareness of the potential signs and risk factors of infectious diseases, as well as a strong encouragement to get any protection you may need before travelling.
What Happens When A Country Loses Elimination Status?
Ultimately, if outbreaks are found or if a country is considered to play host to a specific disease, this can have complications for people travelling into and out of the country.
Usually, it means additional checks and requirements for people leaving the country, including proof of vaccination or additional medical checks either when leaving the country or when coming back, with the risk of quarantine or isolation.
Many countries do not want this, as it makes travel more stressful for other people, which may cause them to reconsider travelling there for their holiday. Even though the USA has its vaccination status, the outbreaks of measles have been a cause for concern for travellers entering the country.
The best way to protect yourself is to keep up to date on the latest travel health news from trusted sources, the most trustworthy of which being your local travel pharmacy.