Iraq travel health
Required is not recommended: the first is what the border asks about, the second is what a clinic would suggest. Both, for Iraq, then the number to dial and what care costs a visitor. Applies to every guide in Iraq: Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, Baghdad.
Required to enter
Nothing. No vaccination certificate is asked for at the border.
Recommended
- Hepatitis A
- Typhoid
- Tetanus up to date
- Rabies for a long stay
Emergency number
122 for an ambulance, 104 for police
Care for visitors
Limited
Erbil and Sulaymaniyah have private hospitals a visitor can use, paid in cash and reasonable; Baghdad has private hospitals the guide knows. The state system is stretched. Evacuation cover, and check that the policy actually covers the country, because many exclude it.
The heat: 45°C from June to September, nothing open in the afternoon, and heat exhaustion is what actually puts visitors in a clinic. Dust in spring. Bottled water only. Sunstroke at the citadel and at Babylon, where there is no shade.
The general rules — clinic timing, water, mosquitoes, insurance — are in travel health tips.
The guides in Iraq
ErbilIraqA citadel lived in for six thousand years, a bazaar of Kurdish tea houses under it, and the capital of the Iraq that visitors actually reach
SulaymaniyahIraqThe cultural capital of Kurdistan: a prison turned museum that spares nothing, a bazaar the size of a town, and mountains with waterfalls an hour out
BaghdadIraqThe city of the caliphs on the Tigris, a book market that reopens every Friday, the Abbasid palace, and a visit that is possible again and is done with a guide