Health Certification
The Tanzanian Government no longer requires a yellow fever certificate however this is advisable. Hepatitis, tetanus, and cholera jabs have been advised to us in the past.  Malaria is prevalent in East Africa and anti-malarial prophylaxis is advised.

We advise you to seek professional medical advice in any medical matter.

Medical Facilities
Tanzania is a poor and underdeveloped nation. Pemba is one of the poorest corners of Tanzania.  Tanzania is heavily reliant on foreign aid.  Approximately 48% (at time of writing) of Tanzania ’s GDP is aid. Subsequently our local medical facilities are sadly not up to international standards.  The nearest hospitals that have international surgical and research standards are in Nairobi 700 kilometres away. Air evacuation is available in the daytime, but Chake Chake Airport has no runway lights and thus night time evacuations are not possible. (This process is excellent, but horrendously expensive; we strongly recommend Travel health insurance.)  In extremis evacuations by sea can be attempted weather and evacuation companies permitting.

Having said all of that, Makangale, our village, does have a reasonable health centre. In Wete and Chake Chake hospitals have clean wards. We sometimes have visiting doctors from Swedish Rotary, UN doctors on detachment and the Ivo di Carneri Health Foundation. In emergency we can usually find one of these honourable people to assist.

In most cases, evacuation is done by insurance companies to your home country with a stabilizing stop in Dar es Salaam. Dar es Salaam has some very good hospitals that are very reasonably priced.

Please note that on occasion it is possible that there is no doctor on the entire island of Pemba. (There are nurses and assistant medical officers)

Dive Medical Facilities

The nearest hyperbaric re-compression chamber is in Likoni in Kenya , there is also a facility in Zanzibar .  Evacuation to Kenya or Zanzibar can be done by boat (where available) or aircraft. All divers are required by our booking conditions to have adequate hyperbaric-medical insurance that covers recreational scuba diving.