Emergencies in Dahab

Good to Know

• Save 122 (police), 123 (ambulance), 180 (fire), and 126 (tourist police) in your phone before you need them — the unified 112 number works too, but the individual direct-dial lines are still in common daily use.
• The Tourist Police line (126) is specifically set up to help foreign visitors and is the most useful first call for theft, scams, or lost documents, since staff are trained to support non-Arabic speakers.
• Mobile coverage and ambulance/emergency response times are generally reliable in Egyptian cities but can be weaker or slower in remote or desert areas — worth bearing in mind for Dahab given its location outside the main Sinai urban centers.
• You can dial 112 from a mobile phone even with a locked screen, no SIM card, or no credit, as long as there's any signal.
• For serious, non-life-threatening situations, many residents and expats find it faster to get a taxi directly to a hospital rather than waiting on an ambulance — worth planning for in a smaller town like Dahab where the nearest larger hospital facilities are in Sharm El Sheikh.
• Dahab is a small town and its in-town hospital has limited capability — for anything beyond minor injuries, expect stabilization locally followed by transfer to Sharm El Sheikh (about 1–1.5 hours away) or Cairo.
• If you dive, know that Dahab has its own hyperbaric/recompression chamber facility for decompression illness — most dive centers in town keep this number on hand and will call it directly if there's a diving accident.
• Given the distances involved, comprehensive travel/medical evacuation insurance is strongly advisable for anyone diving or doing adventure activities (desert trekking, etc.) around Dahab.