Who this is really for
Cholera is a bacterial infection of the gut that, at its worst, produces litres of watery diarrhoea and can dehydrate someone dangerously within hours. It is a disease of broken sanitation - it spreads where sewage reaches drinking water, which in practice means disaster zones, refugee camps and the poorest urban districts.
For an ordinary holiday, even in a country where cholera exists, the risk to a traveller is very low. We say this plainly because a travel clinic that sells every vaccine on the list to everyone who walks in is not giving advice, it is taking orders. If you are going to a beach resort, this is almost certainly not your vaccine.
What taking it involves
Dukoral is not injected. Each dose is a sachet of powder stirred into a glass of water with a buffer solution and drunk. You need an empty stomach - nothing to eat or drink for an hour either side - and the two doses sit between one and six weeks apart.
That spacing is the practical constraint. If the second dose slips beyond six weeks the course has to start again, so if you are on a tight schedule tell us your departure date first and we will work backwards from it.
The modest side benefit
The vaccine gives some short-lived protection against one cause of traveller's diarrhoea, enterotoxigenic E. coli. It is partial and it is brief, and it is not on its own a good reason to take the course.
If avoiding a ruined week is the actual goal, a standby antibiotic and rehydration sachets in your bag will usually do more for you, for less money. We can discuss both at the same appointment.