Health and Safety in Togo

The certificate you cannot arrive without

Togo requires a yellow-fever vaccination certificate from every arriving traveller. This is worth stating plainly because it differs from the pattern most travellers are used to, where the requirement depends on which country you flew in from — here it applies regardless of route, it applies to travellers from neighbouring countries as well, and it is genuinely checked at the airport and at the land crossings rather than waved through. The certificate must have been issued at least ten days before you travel to be valid on arrival, which is the detail that catches people who arrange the vaccination late.

Carry the physical card. The document is the paper certificate itself, and a photograph of it on a phone is not a substitute at a border desk. Keep it with your passport rather than in your luggage, because that is where it will be asked for.

Everything else on the vaccination side is a conversation with a travel clinic several weeks before departure rather than a checklist a travel page should write. They will normally raise typhoid and hepatitis alongside your routine boosters, and the recommendation depends on your own history, your route and how long you are staying.

Malaria, and what the evenings ask of you

Malaria is present throughout Togo, all year, from the coast to the northern savanna. It is the most important health consideration of a visit and the one that needs arranging in advance, because antimalarial medication is prescribed and is usually started before arrival. Which regimen suits you is a clinical decision that depends on your health and your itinerary, so speak to a travel clinic or your own doctor several weeks ahead rather than sorting it in the last week.

The half people neglect is bite avoidance, and it costs nothing. The mosquito that carries malaria bites from dusk onwards, so the evening is when the effort pays: long sleeves and trousers after sundown, repellent on exposed skin, and a room that is screened, air-conditioned or has a net over the bed — check the net for holes before you trust it. A fan pointed at the bed helps more than people expect, because mosquitoes fly badly in moving air.

The part that matters most happens after you get home. Malaria can appear weeks after exposure, when the trip is over and you have stopped thinking about it, and the early symptoms are ordinary ones — fever, headache, aches, tiredness — that get mistaken for flu. If you develop a fever within a few months of returning, tell the doctor you have been in a malaria area and say it explicitly. That sentence is the whole difference.

Zemidjans: the decision you make fifty times a day

Togo moves on the back of a motorbike. The moto-taxi — the zemidjan — is the everyday transport of Lomé and of every town in the country: you flag one down anywhere, agree the fare before getting on, and are across town in a fraction of the time and the cost of anything else. They are genuinely useful, they are what most people around you are using, and telling a visitor never to touch one is advice that gets ignored on the second day. So here is the honest version instead. A motorbike in dense traffic is the least protected way to travel, helmets for passengers are the exception rather than the rule, and this is the single most likely way for a visitor to be seriously hurt in Togo.

What actually reduces the risk, in order of how much it helps: do not use them after dark, when the lighting and the traffic are both worse; do not use them in rain, when the road surface and the visibility both collapse; carry your own helmet if you are staying a while, or ask for one and accept that the answer is often no; refuse a ride where the bike or the rider looks wrong, which is a completely normal thing to do and costs you thirty seconds; wear something that covers your legs, because the burn from a hot exhaust pipe on a bare calf is the commonest minor injury there is; and use a car for anything longer than a town journey. Keep your bag in front of you rather than on your back.

Beyond the bikes, the road picture is the ordinary West African one and the same rule closes it. The single highway that runs the length of the country is the spine of every journey; it carries heavy freight to the Sahel, it is busy, and the specific danger is after dark, when unlit vehicles, pedestrians, animals and unmarked roadworks all share it. The local advice not to travel long distances at night is worth following literally. In a shared taxi, wear a seatbelt if there is one, and do not be shy about asking a driver to slow down.

Water, food, heat and the sea

Do not drink the tap water. Sachet water is sold cold on every street for a few coins and is what most people around you drink — you bite off the corner and squeeze — and bottled water is equally fine and costs more. Use the same water for brushing your teeth if you want to be careful, and be a little wary of ice somewhere improvised. Food is a smaller worry than most visitors expect: eat where there is a queue and quick turnover, favour what is cooked to order in front of you, be careful with anything that has been sitting, and peel your own fruit.

The heat is humid on the coast and dry in the north, and both are more tiring than the temperature suggests. Drink far more water than you think you need, put walking and markets in the morning, and treat the middle of the day as a reason to be somewhere shaded. Between roughly December and February the harmattan carries Saharan dust south: the nights cool pleasantly, the horizons haze over, and anyone with asthma or a respiratory condition will notice the air and should pack accordingly.

The Atlantic here deserves a warning of its own, because the beach in the capital looks inviting and the water is not. This stretch of coast has a strong undertow and a steeply shelving shore, there are no lifeguards anywhere on it, and people drown on it. Swim where a hotel or a local specifically tells you it is safe, do not swim alone, and treat the working fishing beaches as places to walk rather than to bathe.

Ordinary safety, conduct, and getting help in French

Everyday crime is the ordinary urban kind and ordinary urban habits cover it: keep your phone out of sight on a busy street, carry the day's cash rather than everything you have, use the hotel safe, be alert in crowded markets, and take a car rather than a bike at night. Lomé is a relaxed capital by most standards and the welcome towards visitors is genuine; the realistic risk is opportunistic theft rather than anything worse.

Two conduct points that are specific to this country. Vodun is a living religion here rather than a heritage attraction, and its shrines, priests and supply markets are working religious places: ask before photographing anything or anyone, expect a small customary offering where you are shown around, and take the guidance you are given as the whole of the instruction. Separately, do not photograph soldiers, police, government buildings, the airport or the port — this is a rule visitors break by accident and it is the fastest way to a difficult conversation.

Getting help happens in French. That is the practical dimension of the language question: a pharmacist, a clinic, a police station and a roadside official will all deal with you in French, and English is largely confined to hotels and the international sector. If your French is thin, the workable answers are a translation app kept offline, your hotel or host as an intermediary by phone, and the numbers written down somewhere you can point at: 117 for police, 118 for the fire service, and 8200 for the medical emergency service in Lomé.

Two closers. Medical care is reasonable in the capital and thin elsewhere, and serious cases are commonly moved to Accra or to Europe, so travel insurance that explicitly covers medical evacuation is worth having rather than optional. And check your own government's current travel advice while planning: the standard circuit down the coast and up through the middle of the country is well travelled, while the far north near the Burkina Faso border carries advisories that change, and that is a question for the current official position rather than for a guide written in advance.