South Africa Travel Vaccines — What You Need in 2026

Recommended Vaccines

• Hepatitis A

  Allow 2 weeks before travel

• Typhoid

  Allow 2 weeks before travel

Routine Vaccines to Keep Up to Date

Other Health Risks

• Malaria (Kruger National Park / Limpopo region)

Travel Health Summary

South Africa is one of the easier African destinations to prepare for, because most of the country carries no malaria at all. Cape Town, the Garden Route, the Winelands, Johannesburg and the Drakensberg are malaria-free, while transmission is limited to the low-lying northeast — Kruger National Park and the rest of Mpumalanga lowveld, northeastern Limpopo, and far northern KwaZulu-Natal near the Mozambique border — where antimalarial tablets are recommended, with the highest risk in the wet months from roughly September to May. A yellow fever certificate is required for travellers over one year old arriving from or transiting a country with transmission risk, which regularly catches people routing through Kenya, Ethiopia, Zambia or Tanzania, so carry the card for any multi-country African trip. Hepatitis A and typhoid are recommended for most travellers, though tap water in major cities is generally safe and the food safety picture is better than in much of the region. Rabies is present, with cases concentrated in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, and pre-exposure vaccination is worth considering for cyclists, runners, children and long rural stays. Tuberculosis and HIV prevalence are high, which matters mainly for healthcare workers and long-term residents, and schistosomiasis is present in freshwater lakes and rivers in the east, so avoid swimming in the Limpopo, Olifants and similar waters. Private hospitals in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban are excellent and often used for medical tourism, but Kruger camps and remote Karoo or Wild Coast locations can be a long way from trauma care, and road accident risk is the leading cause of serious traveller injury.

Related destinations

Nearby countries with a comparable vaccine and disease-risk profile to South Africa.