Rwanda travel health
Required is not recommended: the first is what the border asks about, the second is what a clinic would suggest. Both, for Rwanda, then the number to dial and what care costs a visitor. Applies to every guide in Rwanda: Volcanoes National Park, Kigali, Lake Kivu.
Required to enter
- Yellow fever certificate, but only if you are arriving from a country where yellow fever is present
Recommended
- Hepatitis A and typhoid
- Tetanus up to date
- Malaria prophylaxis — the risk is high across the country
- Rabies for longer or rural stays
- Meningitis and cholera for some itineraries — ask a travel clinic
Emergency number
112 for police and an ambulance, 111 for fire
Care for visitors
Limited
Limited. Kigali has the country’s best hospitals and private clinics and they cope with the everyday; anything serious means an air ambulance to Nairobi or South Africa. Volcanoes and Nyungwe are hours from Kigali by road, so evacuation cover is the clause that matters.
Malaria is the everyday risk; take the tablets. The gorilla and golden monkey treks go up to around 3,000m in the Virungas, and trekkers with a cold or a stomach bug are turned away, because the gorillas catch what we carry. Neighbouring DR Congo has had Ebola and mpox outbreaks — check the current advice before you fly.
The general rules — clinic timing, water, mosquitoes, insurance — are in travel health tips.
The guides in Rwanda
Volcanoes National ParkRwandaOne hour with a family of mountain gorillas, on the slopes of five volcanoes
KigaliRwandaA capital spread over a thousand hills, swept clean on the last Saturday of the month
Lake KivuRwandaA deep, cool lake under the volcanoes, where the fishermen sing as they row out at dusk