Advice: Get a travel health insurance in any case. These are available for a few Euros per year and cover your comprehensively.

In all bigger towns you will find pharmacies in Uganda. Anyhow, the range of medications available is limited. You should take a sufficient stock with you if you need regular medications.

Also important: Note down the active ingredients of your drugs, because the brand name might be different in Uganda. Unlike for example in Germany, you can get prescription-only drugs freely over the counter.

Medical cover is only in Kampala good. Beside the biggest hospital in Uganda, the Mulago Hospital, there are a few General Practitioners and small clinics. The further you get from the capital the thinner becames the medical cover. Rural hospitals and small medical centres are providing here medical help.

Important: You have to pay for all medical help and drugs in cash. If you are insured you get your expenses back.

Vaccination for Uganda

A journey to a tropical country like Uganda means that you might come into contact with diseases that are not known in the western world. Get yourself advice 6 month before travelling by a doctor for tropical diseases. Current information regarding the health situation in Uganda you can get on the internet.

You need to be vaccinated against yellow fever for entering Uganda, although it is not getting checked at the border. Further recommended vaccinations: Typhus, hepatitis A+B, rabbies and meningitis.

The risk of contracting malaria in uganda is rated high in all regions and all year round. Best protection: Mosquito nets at night, long trousers and sleeves in the evening and insect repellent to apply to the skin. A drug based prophylaxis (Lariam, Malarone) is nowadays not done as a routine. Get advice from a doctor in any case.

Related links

• Find information about the Current advice regarding the health situation in Uganda
• Website of the Mulago-Hospitals
• Website of the Ugandan Ministery of Health

Drinking water in Uganda

The quality of the drinking water in Uganda is quite good, but of course it's not up to the highest German standart. Based on personal experience the all day use of the water for a shower or brushing teeth doesn't make any problems.

For drinking it is better to use water in bottles, which you can buy everywhere in the whole country. This water has guaranteed drinking water quality.

Very common is the water of the company "Rwenzori Beverage Co. Ltd". Even in shops in extremly remote areas you can buy their water. This company is the biggest supplier for soft drinks in whole East-Africa.

Snakes

As a safari traveller you are often asked if snakes are not a problem. Opposed to widespread puplic opinion, snakes are not posing a risk. They are present, even a few venomous ones (black mamba, puff adder, spitting cobra), but most of them are not dangerous. Furthermore, all of them are very shy.

Related links

• Background information regarding Black Mamba
• Background information regarding puff adder
• Background information regarding spitting cobra