Health

Six mistakes people make with travel health

The card in your wallet does less than you think, the medicine in your bag has rules you have never read, and the vaccination you book three weeks out may not have taken effect by the time you fly.

Published 29 September 2026.

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1

Treating a GHIC as travel insurance

This is the expensive one, and it is the mistake that people only discover at the worst possible moment.

The NHS Business Services Authority is blunt about it: a UK EHIC or UK GHIC is not a substitute for travel insurance, it may not cover all health costs, and it never covers repatriation costs.

Repatriation is the part that bankrupts people. A GHIC can get you treated in a state hospital in Spain. It will not pay for the medical flight that brings you home afterwards, or for bringing a body home. Those are the five and six figure costs, and the card is silent on all of them.

Do this: carry both. The card reduces what you pay at the point of treatment; the policy covers getting you home and everything the state system does not provide.
2

Assuming the card works everywhere in Europe, or nowhere outside it

The list of countries is specific, and it is stranger than people expect in both directions.

A UK GHIC is valid in the 27 EU countries plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Montenegro. It also works in some places nobody associates with it: Australia, where the card is used as proof to obtain Medicare, and Guernsey, Jersey, the Isle of Man, Ascension Island, St Helena and Tristan da Cunha. The French overseas territories of Martinique, Mayotte, Guadeloupe, Reunion, French Guiana, Saint-Martin and Corsica accept it too.

Greenland does not, which surprises people who reason from Denmark being in the EU. Nor do the United States, Canada or Turkey. Switzerland is a case of its own, covered below.

Do this: check the country against the NHSBSA list rather than assuming, particularly for territories and islands that belong to a country that is covered.
3

Not realising Switzerland depends on who you are

Every other country on the list works on the basis of where you are. Switzerland works on the basis of your nationality or status, which is a genuinely unusual condition and easy to miss.

You can use the card in Switzerland if you are a UK national, a Swiss national, a citizen of an EU country, a refugee, a stateless person, or a family member, dependant or survivor of someone holding one of those statuses. You may be asked to prove it.

For most British travellers this is satisfied automatically. It matters for households where not everyone holds the same nationality, which is exactly the group least likely to have been warned.

Do this: if anyone in your party holds a non-UK, non-EU passport, check their position before relying on the card in Switzerland, and carry proof of status.
4

Paying for a GHIC, or leaving it at home with no plan

Applying for a GHIC is free through the official NHS service. Sites that charge a fee to process the application for you are selling you something you can get for nothing, and they are consistently among the first results for the search.

The second half of this is what to do when the card is in a drawer at home or has quietly expired. There is a route: a Provisional Replacement Certificate from the NHS Business Services Authority gives you the same cover the card would have entitled you to.

The catch is that you cannot apply for one in advance. It exists for the situation where you need treatment and do not have a valid card with you, which means knowing it exists is the whole value of it.

Do this: apply only through the official NHS service, check the expiry date before you travel, and remember the letters PRC if you arrive somewhere without the card.
5

Packing prescription medicine without checking the rules

Ordinary prescriptions are usually fine. Medicine containing a controlled drug is not automatically fine, and some of them are more common in UK prescriptions than people assume.

GOV.UK sets out two rules that catch travellers. You must carry medicine containing a controlled drug in your hand luggage when entering or leaving the UK, so packing it in the hold is itself a problem. And it may be taken away from you at the border if you cannot prove it was prescribed for you.

The destination matters just as much as the UK side. Guidance is to check the rules for the country you are going to with its embassy before you travel, because a medicine that is routine here can be restricted or outright banned elsewhere.

Do this: ask your pharmacist whether anything you take is a controlled drug. If it is, carry it in hand luggage, in its original labelled packaging, with a copy of the prescription or a letter from your doctor, and check the destination's rules with its embassy.
6

Booking vaccinations too late to work

People treat vaccination as a task to tick off before departure rather than a process with its own timetable, and the timetable does not care about your departure date.

Some travel vaccines are a course of more than one dose, spaced weeks apart. Others need time after the final dose before protection is established. Book two or three weeks out and you can end up flying having had the injection but without the protection, which feels like being covered and is not.

The NHS advises booking at least 4 to 6 weeks before you travel, and seeing a GP or travel clinic 6 to 8 weeks ahead. There is a second reason to move early that has nothing to do with immunology: the wait for an appointment is itself often 4 to 6 weeks, so a course that technically had time can still run out of it.

Do this: look up your destination on TravelHealthPro, the resource FCDO travel advice points to, as soon as you book, and make the appointment then rather than when the trip starts to feel close.
The short version. A GHIC and a travel insurance policy do different jobs, and the card never pays to bring you home. Check the country against the list rather than assuming Europe means covered. Never pay for the card. Ask whether your medicine is a controlled drug before you pack it, and put it in hand luggage if it is. And book vaccinations 6 to 8 weeks out, not two. See also the six mistakes people make buying travel insurance and the six mistakes people make with visas and entry rules.

Sources

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