Health, vaccinations and medical care in Vietnam

Health, insurance and where to be treated

Hospitals that work for travelers, from the available sources:

• Hanoi - Vinmec Times City and the Hanoi French Hospital, both with 24/7 emergency care.
• HCMC - FV Hospital, with a 24/7 emergency department.
• Da Nang - Vinmec Da Nang, nonstop emergency department, and it also lists airport patient transport on demand.
• Still at Nội Bài airport? It has its own 24/7 emergency medical points in both T1 and T2, on (024) 3587 6601.

Do not drink tap water. The US travel.state.gov states plainly that it is not considered safe to drink anywhere in Vietnam, the large cities included. Use bottled or safely filtered water.

Vaccinations work in two layers.

• No universal vaccination requirement appears as a blanket entry condition for every tourist in the immigration sources reviewed.
• The CDC still recommends keeping routine vaccines up to date, and highlights measles, a year-round risk of dengue, and in some situations rabies or other vaccines depending on the trip.
• Combine that with Timatic checked against your full route, especially if you fly through countries with different sanitary rules.

The EHIC is useless here. Vietnam is not an EHIC destination, and even inside Europe the EHIC is no substitute for travel insurance - it covers neither repatriation, private care nor lost belongings. For Vietnam, standard commercial travel insurance is a necessity, not a nice-to-have.