Tanzania Afya Msafiri health form: who must fill it in, when, and what to do with the QR code

§1What is the Afya Msafiri form?

Afya Msafiri means “traveller’s health” in Swahili. It is the health surveillance portal of the Tanzanian Ministry of Health, afyamsafiri.moh.go.tz, which hosts the Traveller’s Health Surveillance Form. It is available in Swahili, English and French.

Until autumn 2026, the form applied only to travellers coming from the Democratic Republic of the Congo or Uganda, in the context of the Ebola outbreak in East Africa. The Ministry’s Notice No. 18, published on 17 October 2026 and applicable immediately, extended it to all travellers. No Ebola case had then been declared in Tanzania.

The form is free. It replaces neither the visa, nor the mandatory insurance, nor the yellow fever certificate, and covers no medical costs. It rests on the Public Health Act of 2009: a false declaration is an offence.

§2Who must fill in the Tanzania health form, and when?

Who. All travellers, with no exception of nationality, by air, road or boat. The FCDO and France Diplomatie relay the rule. For Zanzibar, no text excludes the archipelago from the notice; a separate Zanzibari portal, mentioned by a foreign site, could not be confirmed. The form should be completed whatever the point of arrival.

Children. Each passenger fills in an individual form; a child travelling with a parent or guardian has their own, completed with the adult’s help. A family of four therefore obtains four QR codes.

When. Notice No. 18 allows the form to be completed before departure or on arrival, with no strict deadline. The portal still displays an older message: submission within the 24 hours before arrival. The safest course is to complete it the day before the flight or during a connection.

Completing it on arrival requires a charged phone and a connection. For a night arrival with children, it is the wrong option.

For a multi-stage trip, the form is completed for entry into the country. A domestic flight between Arusha and Zanzibar is not an entry, and no source consulted requires a new form for it; leaving the country and coming back, for example after a few days in Kenya, does however constitute a new entry.

§3How to fill in the Afya Msafiri form

The portal asks for the passport details and the travel details, dates and times included. Have to hand the flight number, arrival time, point of entry, address of the first accommodation and countries recently visited, stopovers included.

The four steps are summarised at the top of the page. The confirmation contains, besides the QR code, a unique health code, to be shown at the health desk.

The portal also hosts departure and internal-travel forms. No official source requires them of tourists: Notice No. 18 concerns entry.

For a question, the Ministry gives the freephone line 199, a short number reachable from within Tanzania, and poe@afya.go.tz, more reliable from abroad.

§4QR code and temperature check: what happens on arrival?

At the health desk, each traveller presents their QR code or reference number, children included, on a phone or on paper. The temperature of all travellers is checked at all points of entry. The Ministry has not published what is done in the event of a fever.

Without the form, no public penalty is set. The portal allows it to be completed on arrival, which in principle makes up for an oversight, at the cost of a wait; the health officer remains the sole judge.

A printed copy, kept with the passport, the insurance certificate and the visa, protects against a flat battery after a long flight.

§521-day follow-up: who is concerned after the trip?

Travellers classed as high risk receive an automatic message every day for twenty-one days, the maximum incubation period of Ebola, and must reply to it, even after leaving Tanzania. The classification criteria are not published.

The messages arrive at the phone number or email entered in the form: accurate contact details that can be reached after the return are essential. Symptoms during the stay or in the following three weeks are reported to 199 or poe@afya.go.tz.

On return, a doctor consulted for a fever must be told of the stay: malaria is present all year in Tanzania below 1,800 metres (see the yellow fever page). The other formalities need more lead time, starting with the e-visa, whose average delay observed by the team on real applications is about 7 days.