How airports protect traveller health

The International Health Regulations, in plain language

The International Health Regulations (2005), known as the IHR, are a binding agreement among 196 States Parties — all WHO Member States. Their purpose, in the Regulations’ own words, is to prevent, protect against, control and provide a public health response to the international spread of disease, in ways that are commensurate with public health risks and that avoid unnecessary interference with international traffic and trade. The IHR were amended in 2014, 2022 and 2024, and the 2024 amendments entered into force on 19 September 2025, except for States Parties that rejected them. The WHO International Health Regulations pages are the source to read for the current text; this page paraphrases them and does not reproduce them.

Points of entry, and designated airports

A point of entry is a passage for international entry or exit of travellers, baggage, cargo, containers, conveyances, goods and postal parcels. There are three types: international airports, seaports and ground crossings. Each State Party designates the airports and ports that must develop the core capacities set out in Annex 1 of the Regulations, and may ask WHO to verify and certify the capacities at an airport or port. The designation matters: the IHR do not demand the same capacities at every airstrip, only at the designated points of entry. A traveller cannot tell from outside which airports a country has designated — the designation is a matter for the country’s competent authority, the authority responsible for applying health measures under the IHR at that point of entry.

What a designated airport must be able to do

Annex 1, Part B of the IHR sets out the core capacity requirements for designated airports, ports and ground crossings, in two layers. At all times, the capacities include access to an appropriate medical service, including diagnostic facilities placed so ill travellers can be assessed and cared for promptly, with adequate staff, equipment and premises; equipment and personnel to transport ill travellers to an appropriate medical facility; trained personnel to inspect conveyances; a safe environment for travellers using point-of-entry facilities, including potable water, eating establishments, flight catering, public washrooms and waste disposal, checked by inspection programmes; and, as far as practicable, a programme and trained personnel for the control of vectors and reservoirs in and near points of entry. For responding to events that may constitute a public health emergency of international concern, the capacities include an appropriate public-health emergency response, established and maintained through a public-health emergency contingency plan, with a named coordinator and contact points for the point of entry, public-health and other agencies; appropriate space, separate from other travellers, to interview suspect or affected persons; facilities for the assessment and, if required, quarantine of suspect travellers; and the ability to apply entry or exit controls for arriving and departing travellers. States must also be able to detect, assess, notify and report public-health events, and to furnish WHO with data on sources of infection or contamination, including vectors, at points of entry when requested.

CAPSCA: where aviation and public health meet

CAPSCA — the Collaborative Arrangement for the Prevention and Management of Public Health Events in Civil Aviation — is a voluntary, cross-sectoral, multi-organizational collaboration programme established in 2006 and managed by ICAO with support from WHO. Its purpose is to bring together international, regional, national and local organisations to improve preparedness planning and response to public-health events that affect aviation: communicable disease (including pandemic influenza, Zika, Ebola and coronavirus), chemical events, bioterrorism, volcanic ash, and water, food safety, hygiene and waste management. It runs annual regional meetings, and it makes assistance visits to States and international airports, checking readiness against ICAO Standards and Recommended Practices and against the IHR, and advising on gaps. It also runs a network that rapidly informs members before, during and after a public-health event. That is why airport health is a joint aviation and public-health subject, not a purely medical one: screening, health declarations and contingency plans at airports sit under this arrangement. But the assistance-visit reports are confidential to the State, so no per-airport CAPSCA outcome can be quoted anywhere — and this site quotes none.

What this means for a traveller, in practice

Three practical consequences follow from the framework. First, the health measures a traveller meets at an airport — a health declaration form, temperature or visual screening, a request for a vaccination certificate — are the country’s measures, applied under the IHR at that point of entry, and they can change at short notice when an outbreak moves. Second, the measures are event-driven and temporary: they appear during outbreak surveillance and lapse when the event passes, which is why this site dates every outbreak measure it names and links to the live official source rather than freezing the rule into static copy. Third, the one standing entry-health rule is yellow fever: under the IHR a country may require proof of yellow-fever vaccination from travellers arriving from a country with yellow-fever risk, including in some cases after a transit of more than 12 hours in an airport in such a country. Since 2016 the International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis — the “yellow card” — is valid for life once issued. The exact current list of countries requiring yellow-fever proof is not published on this site; it changes, and the CDC Yellow Book country list and the CDC destination pages are the sources to check.

What no one can tell you about an airport

No public per-airport IHR compliance score exists. WHO does not publish a scorecard of IHR core capacities by airport, and none was found in the research behind this area. The IHR core capacities are assessed at country level — through mechanisms such as joint external evaluations of a country’s IHR capacities — not as a league table of airports. Any website that gives an airport a health compliance rating, a star score or a “safe airport” badge is inventing it. This site does not. The region pages in this area therefore present the airports, the general IHR framework, and the travel-health guidance that applies everywhere, and they say plainly what is verified and what is not known — including that, for 44 of the 50 busiest airports, no airport-specific health item was found in the research, which is absence of evidence and not evidence of absence.

Frequently asked questions

Does the WHO run airport health checks?

No. Countries run the checks at their own airports. The IHR set what countries must be able to do, and WHO can be asked to verify and certify capacities — the day-to-day work sits with each country's competent authority at the airport.

Is there a public score for how well an airport follows the rules?

No. WHO does not publish a per-airport scorecard of IHR core capacities, and CAPSCA assistance-visit reports are confidential to the State. No site can honestly give an airport a health compliance rating.

What is the one vaccine rule that actually applies at borders?

Yellow fever. Under the IHR, a country may require proof of yellow-fever vaccination from travellers arriving from a country with yellow-fever risk, including after a long transit there. Since 2016 the certificate is valid for life.