Albania travel health
Required is not recommended: the first is what the border asks about, the second is what a clinic would suggest. Both, for Albania, then the number to dial and what care costs a visitor. Applies to every guide in Albania: Tirana, Sarandë, Ksamil, Berat, Gjirokastër, Himarë.
Required to enter
Nothing. No vaccination certificate is asked for at the border.
Recommended
- Hepatitis A
- Tetanus up to date
- Rabies for a long or rural stay — stray dogs are common
Emergency number
112 for everything, or 127 for an ambulance
Care for visitors
Limited
Private clinics in Tirana are good and used to foreigners; the public hospitals are basic and outside the capital care thins fast. Anything serious means Tirana or a flight out, so insurance with evacuation cover matters here.
Do not drink the tap water outside Tirana, where it is safe; bottled elsewhere. The heat inland in high summer and the driving are what actually send visitors to a clinic. Ticks in the mountains in early summer.
The general rules — clinic timing, water, mosquitoes, insurance — are in travel health tips.
The guides in Albania
TiranaAlbaniaA capital painted in colours to shake off the grey, with bunkers turned into galleries and a café on every corner
SarandëAlbaniaA horseshoe bay facing Corfu, the gateway to the Riviera, and a town that quadruples in August
KsamilAlbaniaThree tiny islands you can swim to, water the colour of the Maldives, and a village that has grown faster than its plumbing
BeratAlbaniaA thousand windows climbing two hillsides above a river, a castle people still live in, and the best raki in the country
GjirokastërAlbaniaA city of stone roofs on a mountainside, a fortress with a captured plane on the wall, and the birthplace of a dictator and a novelist
HimarëAlbaniaThe quiet middle of the Riviera: a Greek-speaking old village on the hill, a beach town below, and the Llogara pass above it all