Slovakia travel health
Required is not recommended: the first is what the border asks about, the second is what a clinic would suggest. Both, for Slovakia, then the number to dial and what care costs a visitor. Applies to every guide in Slovakia: Bratislava, High Tatras, Košice, Banská Štiavnica, Spiš.
Required to enter
Nothing. No vaccination certificate is asked for at the border.
Recommended
- Routine vaccinations up to date
- Tick-borne encephalitis for walking in the forests or the mountains from spring to autumn — it is present throughout the country
Emergency number
112, or 155 for an ambulance
Care for visitors
Good and affordable
EU/EEA and Swiss visitors are treated on the same terms as residents with an EHIC or GHIC card; UK visitors use a GHIC. Everyone else pays, and travel insurance is worth having for the repatriation cover rather than the treatment. Mountain rescue in the Tatras is charged for; check your insurance covers it before hiking or skiing.
Tap water is drinkable everywhere. Ticks in forest and meadow from April to October. Altitude and sudden weather on the high Tatra ridges, which go above 2,600m.
The general rules — clinic timing, water, mosquitoes, insurance — are in travel health tips.
The guides in Slovakia
BratislavaSlovakiaA small old town under a square castle, an hour from Vienna, and a flying saucer on the bridge
High TatrasSlovakiaThe smallest high mountains in Europe, strung along an electric railway, with huts you walk to and summits you mostly cannot in winter
KošiceSlovakiaSlovakia’s second city, built along one long main street with the country’s largest cathedral in the middle of it
Banská ŠtiavnicaSlovakiaA silver-mining town built down the inside of an old volcano, with two castles, a calvary on the hill opposite, and lakes the miners dug
SpišSlovakiaOne of the largest castle ruins in Central Europe on a bare hill, and a walled town down the road with the tallest Gothic wooden altar in the world