Measles, Dengue, and the World Cup: The 20-Minute International Travel Checklist We Use Before Every Trip

By Cayla McGrath
Edited and approved by Kristen Carpenter, PA-C — Clinical Advisory Board Member

For many soccer fans, attending the FIFA World Cup is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The 2026 tournament is expected to be the largest in history, with matches spread across the United States, Mexico, and Canada and millions of fans traveling from around the world to be part of it. Flights are booked. Hotels are filling up. Families and friend groups are already planning the international travel trips they’ve dreamed about for years.

At the same time, travel headlines this summer have been filled with news about measles outbreaks, dengue activity, cruise ship illnesses, and evolving CDC travel notices. It can be difficult to know what actually matters, what doesn’t, and whether any of it should change your plans.

Here’s the good news: none of these headlines are a reason to cancel your trip.

They are, however, a reminder that international travel is easier when you spend a few minutes preparing before you leave.

One of the biggest misconceptions about travel health is that it’s mostly about rare diseases in faraway places. In reality, the issues most likely to affect travelers are often much more ordinary: a vaccine you forgot to check, a medication that runs out halfway through a trip, a case of travelers’ diarrhea, a mosquito-borne illness that’s active in the region you’re visiting, or a common infection that becomes surprisingly difficult to treat when you’re navigating an unfamiliar healthcare system.

The good news is that addressing most of those risks doesn’t require hours of research or a complicated medical plan. In fact, the same checklist our team of physicians, physician assistants, and pharmacists uses before international travel can be completed in about 20 minutes.

Here’s what we recommend checking before you go.

Start With the CDC International Travel Notices

Before any international travel, one of the smartest things you can do is spend a few minutes reviewing the CDC’s travel notices for your destination. These notices change regularly and provide updates on outbreaks, disease activity, and health recommendations specific to where you’re traveling. This year, measles and dengue are two of the most notable concerns appearing across multiple destinations.

The CDC has issued a global dengue advisory covering more than 100 countries, and dengue activity remains elevated across many popular travel destinations throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, and tropical regions around the world. For most travelers, the takeaway isn’t panic. It’s awareness. Knowing what’s active at your destination helps you make informed decisions before you board the plane.

Verify Your Vaccines Before You Leave

If there’s one item on this year’s checklist that deserves special attention, it’s measles protection. Many adults assume they’re protected because they were vaccinated as children, and most are. However, healthcare professionals are encouraging travelers to verify their vaccination status, especially if records are incomplete or uncertain.

This is particularly relevant for travelers heading to World Cup host cities, where large crowds and international travel create ideal conditions for infectious diseases to spread.

For many people, confirming vaccination status takes just a few minutes through a healthcare provider, patient portal, or immunization record system.

It’s one of the easiest items on the list—and one of the highest impact.

Understand the Difference Between Health Risks and Travel Disruptions

One thing the CDC board doesn’t always capture is the difference between a serious health threat and a trip disruption.

For example, a recent hantavirus outbreak on an Antarctic cruise ship generated significant headlines. While the story was alarming, public health authorities assessed the broader risk as low. Meanwhile, far more travelers will lose vacation days this year to things like travelers’ diarrhea, respiratory viruses, motion sickness, dehydration, or a urinary tract infection than they ever will to a rare infectious disease.

This distinction matters because most travel health preparation should focus on what is likely, not simply what is newsworthy.

A day spent recovering in your hotel room because you couldn’t find treatment for a common illness can derail a trip just as effectively as something much rarer.

Pack for the Problems Most International Travelers Actually Face

When our clinical team prepares for travel, we don’t build a suitcase around worst-case scenarios.We build it around common ones.

A small travel health kit should be able to handle minor injuries, dehydration, motion sickness, blisters, and other everyday issues that frequently arise during travel. Bandages, wound care supplies, electrolyte packets, a thermometer, and basic over-the-counter medications cover a surprising number of situations.

Beyond that, we think about access. What happens if someone develops a UTI on day four of a two-week trip? What if travelers’ diarrhea strikes halfway through a vacation? What if a common infection appears while you’re in a foreign country where prescriptions don’t transfer and healthcare systems operate differently than they do at home?

Those are not rare scenarios. They’re predictable ones.

That’s why our team approaches travel preparedness through the lens of Appropriate Medical Preparation. The goal isn’t to prepare for everything. It’s to prepare for the things most likely to interrupt your trip and create unnecessary stress.

Don’t Assume a Foreign Pharmacy Will Solve the Problem

One of the biggest mistakes travelers make is assuming they’ll simply buy what they need if something comes up. Sometimes that works. Often it doesn’t.

Prescription laws vary dramatically from country to country. Medications may be sold under different names. A prescription from your physician at home may not be valid abroad. Some medications available in the United States face restrictions elsewhere, while medications sold over the counter in another country may differ significantly from what you’re accustomed to using.

By the time many travelers discover these differences, they’re already sick. That’s why our philosophy is simple: if it’s something you know you may need, don’t leave access to chance.

The 20-Minute Pre-Travel Checklist

Before your next international travel, spend 20 minutes working through these four questions:

1. Have I reviewed the CDC travel notices for my destination?
2. Is my vaccination status up to date, particularly for measles?
3. Do I have enough of my routine medications for the entire trip, plus extra time in case of delays?
4. Do I have a travel health kit that can handle common illnesses and minor medical issues without requiring me to navigate a foreign healthcare system?

If you can answer “yes” to those four questions, you’re ahead of most travelers.

How the Jase Team Travels

At Jase, we spend a lot of time thinking about preparedness because we’ve spent our careers seeing what happens when people don’t have access to what they need.

That doesn’t mean we travel anxiously. Quite the opposite.

The goal of preparation is freedom. When you’ve verified your vaccines, checked destination-specific health notices, packed your medications, and prepared for the most common travel disruptions, you stop worrying about them.

That’s why we don’t view travel preparedness as something separate from travel planning. It’s simply part of traveling well.

The clinicians on our team don’t prepare because they expect something to go wrong. They prepare because they’d rather spend their trip enjoying the destination than trying to find a pharmacy, clinic, or prescription in a city they’ve never visited before.

And that’s exactly what we want for you, too.