Egypt travel health
Required is not recommended: the first is what the border asks about, the second is what a clinic would suggest. Both, for Egypt, then the number to dial and what care costs a visitor. Applies to every guide in Egypt: Cairo & the Pyramids, Luxor, Sharm el-Sheikh, Hurghada.
Required to enter
- Yellow fever certificate, but only if you are arriving from a country where yellow fever is present
Recommended
- Hepatitis A
- Typhoid
- Tetanus up to date
- Rabies for longer stays
- Hepatitis B for extended stays
Emergency number
123 for an ambulance, 122 for police
Care for visitors
Good but costly
Private hospitals in Cairo are decent and cheap by European standards, and the international ones have English-speaking staff. Public hospitals are basic and overcrowded. Insurance is worth having; private facilities want payment up front.
Do not drink the tap water and avoid ice outside good hotels — stomach illness affects a large share of visitors. Summer heat at the pyramids is a genuine medical risk. Rabies is present in street dogs.
The general rules — clinic timing, water, mosquitoes, insurance — are in travel health tips.
The guides in Egypt
Cairo & the PyramidsEgyptThe last standing wonder of the ancient world, on the edge of a megacity
LuxorEgyptThe greatest open-air museum in the world, on both banks of the Nile
Sharm el-SheikhEgyptThe Red Sea, which is the best diving in the northern hemisphere, with a resort attached
HurghadaEgyptA reef the length of a coastline, and three hundred and sixty days of sun over it