Health, vaccinations and medical care in Cambodia

Insurance first

Public hospitals are not equipped for a serious emergency and the standard answer to a major injury or illness is evacuation to Bangkok or Singapore. That flight costs tens of thousands of dollars.

Travel insurance that explicitly covers medical evacuation and repatriation is the single most important thing you bring. Check it covers a motorbike if you intend to ride one - most policies exclude riding without the correct licence, and motorbike injuries are the commonest serious problem visitors have here.

Mosquitoes

• Dengue is the real risk and 2026 is a bad year. Cambodia had recorded 28,074 cases and 38 deaths by mid-July 2026, about 58% up on the same point in 2025. It is worst in the rainy season, May to October, and it is an urban disease - Phnom Penh and Siem Reap included. There is no drug for it, so bite avoidance is the whole strategy: repellent with DEET or picaridin by day as well as at night, since the dengue mosquito bites in daylight.
• Malaria is a much smaller worry than most people expect. No risk in Phnom Penh, and very low around Siem Reap, the Angkor temples and Tonle Sap. Risk elsewhere is low, and tablets are usually recommended only for remote forested areas near the borders. Mefloquine resistance is widespread in the western provinces, so it is the wrong drug here.
• Japanese encephalitis is a rural, rainy-season risk and worth a vaccine for a long or rural trip.

Vaccines

• For everyone: hepatitis A, typhoid, tetanus up to date, plus routine MMR and diphtheria-tetanus-polio.
• Consider: rabies, hepatitis B and Japanese encephalitis for longer stays, rural travel or anything involving animals.
• A yellow fever certificate is required if you arrive from a country where yellow fever is present. There is no yellow fever in Cambodia itself.

Rabies

Dogs and monkeys carry rabies here, and the monkeys around the Angkor temples bite. Do not feed them and do not hold food where they can see it.

If you are bitten or scratched, wash the wound with soap and running water for 15 minutes and get to a clinic the same day. The Institut Pasteur du Cambodge on Monivong Boulevard in Phnom Penh is the reliable place for post-exposure vaccine, and it is one of the few places in the country that reliably has it.

Where to go when ill

• Phnom Penh: Royal Phnom Penh Hospital and Calmette Hospital are the usual choices, with Institut Pasteur for vaccines and bites.
• Siem Reap: Royal Angkor International Hospital.
• Serious cases go to Bangkok. Any of the above will arrange it, and this is where the insurance earns its keep.

Food and water

• Do not drink the tap water. Bottled and filtered water is universal and cheap, and most guesthouses have a refill station.
• Ice in restaurants and bars is factory made and safe. The cylindrical ice with a hole through it is the commercial kind.
• Street food is good and busy stalls are the safe ones, for the ordinary reason that the turnover is high.