Is Madeira Safe? Emergency Numbers, Hospital and Pharmacies

No Published Crime Figure

No crime rate or crime statistic for Madeira appears on any official page we read. We will not borrow a number from a ranking site or an index, because those are not official and can be out of date. What we can say is structural: 112 is answered in the first instance by the PSP, the island has a full policing structure with PSP in Funchal, the GNR outside it, and the Polícia Judiciária for serious crime.

The regional tourism department lists all of them on its own useful contacts page, which is the closest an official source comes to telling visitors who to call.

Night and Solo Travel

There is no separate official reading of safety at night, and none for solo female travellers either. No authority breaks its information down that way. That silence is itself the finding.

What remains is the standard set of precautions that apply anywhere: watch your belongings in crowded places, keep valuables out of sight, plan how you get back to your accommodation, and use the same caution you would at home. Funchal's evening areas are covered in our Funchal at night page.

If Something Is Stolen

Theft of a phone or a bag does not need a station visit. Portugal's national Queixa Eletrónica portal lets residents and foreign nationals, including tourists, file a police report online for crimes such as theft. The portal excludes emergencies and crimes in progress, which must go through 112.

No official page we read confirms a dedicated tourist police unit on Madeira, so a report in person goes to the regular PSP station in Funchal on 291 208 400.

Hospital Dr. Nélio Mendonça

The main public hospital is Hospital Dr. Nélio Mendonça at Avenida Luís de Camões 57, 9004-514 Funchal, phone 291 705 600. It is run by SESARAM, the regional health service, and together with Hospital dos Marmeleiros it forms Funchal's central hospital. It opened on 9 September 1973 under its original name, Hospital Cruz de Carvalho.

Children have their own entrance to care: the paediatric emergency service is physically separate from the adult emergency, located on the hospital's technical floor, and takes patients aged 0 to 17 years 364 days.

The Eight 24-Hour Urgent Care Centres

Since 1 May 2024, eight health centres run a Serviço de Atendimento a Situações Urgentes, SASU, around the clock. They are the practical place for an urgent but not life-threatening problem when you are not in Funchal. SESARAM publishes an information line for the network, 808 201 414.

The eight are Calheta, Machico, São Vicente, Porto Santo, Santana, Porto Moniz, Ribeira Brava and Câmara de Lobos, which covers both coasts and the second island.

Health Centre Phone Numbers

SESARAM and the regional tourism department publish phone numbers for the municipal health centres. The two lists differ slightly for some entries, so we print the tourism department table, read directly, and flag the differences. If you cannot reach one number, try the SASU line above.

The table below compares the main centres by municipality and phone as listed on the official contacts page.

The figures below come from the regional tourism department's useful contacts table, read directly from the official page, and are cross-checked against SESARAM's own health centre contact list where both agree.

The Private SMS Line

One contact causes confusion. The tourism contacts page lists SMS Serviços Médicos de Urgência in Funchal on 291 204 480 and 927 813 729. This is a private medical service, not the public emergency department.

Do not use it instead of 112 in a real emergency, and do not expect public hospital billing rules to apply to it.

The Official Register Works

IASaúde, the regional health administration, runs the official pharmacy tools. Its register search returns 65 pharmacies for the Autonomous Region, searchable by municipality across all eleven, each entry carrying its licence number and phone. This part is reliable and is the first place to look.

The Duty-Pharmacy Tool Often Does Not

Here is the negative finding that matters most. The separate duty search on the same official site offers only five municipalities in its dropdown, Câmara de Lobos, Funchal, Machico, Santa Cruz and São Vicente. For the day we checked it answered with a message saying there was no on-duty pharmacy information for the selected day.

Six of the eleven municipalities are not even offered as options. An older government duty-pharmacy web address no longer resolves at all.

What To Do Instead

Our pick: phone a pharmacy from the official register and ask, or call the local health centre. Pharmacists know the rota even when the website does not show it. Third-party aggregator sites list duty pharmacies by municipality, but they are not official and we do not cite them as a source.

Outside normal hours and for anything more than a minor problem, the SASU urgent care centres in the hospital section above are open around the clock.

What the EHIC Does

The European Health Insurance Card lets an EU-insured visitor access medically necessary, state-provided healthcare in Portugal under the same conditions and at the same cost as a person insured in Portugal. That is the key phrase: the same conditions. The card does not guarantee free treatment.

Madeira has no separate carve-out. For EHIC purposes the island is treated as part of Portugal, and what you pay depends on what the Portuguese system charges its own residents, which can include a user fee at a public emergency department.

Non-EU Visitors

No official Portuguese or EU source states a blanket exemption from hospital charges for visitors without the card. UK travellers use a separate arrangement under the post-Brexit agreements, and travellers from countries with no reciprocal deal have no card at all. The safe assumption for a non-EU visitor is that care is billed unless insurance or an agreement says otherwise.

The Honest Gap

Public hospital emergency rooms in Portugal generally charge a user fee unless the patient arrives by referral, is admitted, or falls under an exemption, but no page we could fetch states the Madeira figure for a foreign visitor, and we will not print a number we cannot source. This is the plain conclusion: carry travel insurance that covers medical care and, given what follows on trails and wind, also covers the activities you plan. Check our Madeira costs page for what everyday spending looks like.

Walking: The Official Advice, Quoted

Visit Madeira's own Notice to Walkers is the clearest official statement of what can go wrong and how to prevent it. It recommends that you carry extra food and water, wear suitable clothes and shoes, bring a mobile phone, confirm the route can be finished before dark, check current trail conditions beforehand, tell someone your destination and expected return time, and in case of heavy rain or strong wind do not continue and turn back. The final line is simply: don't take risks.

You Are Legally Responsible

This is not only advice. Article 11 of regional decree DLR 24/2022/M of 19 December states that users of walking trails are personally and exclusively responsible for any material or human damage during their use. The rule is quoted on the SIMplifica booking page and ticked in the booking form.

IFCN, the nature institute, continuously monitors the trails and marks each as open, restricted or inaccessible. It publishes no trail durations or difficulty grades, so any walking time you read anywhere is an estimate by whoever wrote it, not an official figure. A guide takes the route-finding and judgement off you, which is why we list tours at the end of this page.

Refunds of trail bookings are granted only when IFCN or the authorities officially closed or restricted the trail on the booking date, requested within 10 working days. Rain, illness or a missed flight do not qualify.

UK Government Advice

The UK Foreign Office addresses Madeira hiking directly. It says hiking there can be challenging, and advises choosing paths suited to your fitness and experience, being prepared for narrow, uneven paths and heights, wearing appropriate footwear, taking extra care on wet ground after rain, telling your accommodation your planned route, and carrying a phone. Its beach advice is generic Portugal guidance: supervise children, avoid diving into unfamiliar water, and watch for rip currents.

The Sea

The safe swimming options are the managed ones. Funchal's bathing complexes and Praia Formosa are lifeguarded during the bathing season, and the paid volcanic pools at Porto Moniz have lifeguards constantly present according to the municipality. Seventeen coastal beaches across the region hold Blue Flag status on the official 2026 list, along with the marinas at Funchal, Calheta and Machico.

The open coast is another matter. IPMA issues sea agitation warnings for Madeira's zones, and a red flag on a Portuguese beach means entering the water is prohibited outright. That flag rule is national practice, and no Madeira maritime authority page we read prints the legend, so we say where it comes from.

For a calm day on the water, the catamaran dolphin and whale watching trip sails with a certified crew and cancels with a full refund when conditions are unsafe. Where to swim instead is on our beaches page.

The table below compares the four outdoor risks this page covers, what each responsible authority actually publishes, and the action that follows. All statements come from the official pages linked in the source note.

The Colour Scale and the Four Zones

IPMA, the Portuguese meteorological service, issues warnings on a four-level colour scale. Green means no adverse conditions are expected, yellow means a risk to weather-dependent activities such as outdoor plans or driving, orange means a dangerous situation with a moderate to high risk, and red means extremely dangerous phenomena. Warnings are issued per hazard, covering strong wind, heavy rain, thunderstorms, heat, cold, persistent fog and rough seas.

Madeira gets its own warnings, separate from the mainland, in four zones: Costa Norte, Regiões Montanhosas, Costa Sul and Porto Santo. Check the zone you are walking in, not the island as a whole.

What Yellow or Orange Means for a Trail Day

Our reading of the official advice: a yellow warning means conditions are against the Visit Madeira walkers' advice, which tells you not to continue in heavy rain or strong wind. An orange warning means a moderate-to-high risk situation, and our pick is to swap the ridge walk for something low and sheltered. The mountains make this real: Funchal at 58 metres altitude averages around 20 degrees annually, while the high ground around Pico do Arieiro is markedly cooler and wetter, so a fine morning in town can be fog and wind on the ridge.

Fire Bans

During high forest-fire-risk periods the regional civil protection service prohibits recreational bonfires and open fires, burning of cut vegetation, use of open flames for lighting or cooking outdoors, sky lanterns and fireworks, and smoking or any open flame within forest areas. Anyone spotting a fire is told to report it immediately through 112, the local fire brigade or civil protection. The UK Foreign Office directs travellers to the IPMA website for Madeira wildfire forecasts specifically, separate from mainland pages, and notes that summer carries high wildfire risk generally in Portugal.

The Airport Wind Problem

Cristiano Ronaldo Airport sees wind-related cancellations and diversions through the year, and regional news has reported single days with dozens of flights cancelled. No official airport or airline page we read states a wind-speed threshold for a diversion, so that figure is simply not published. The practical response is to keep slack in the last day, avoid connecting on the same afternoon you fly out, and know how you would reach the airport if a flight moves.

The wind patterns behind it are on our Madeira weather page.

The Mosquito and Dengue

The Aedes aegypti mosquito has been present on Madeira since 2005, according to the regional government's own mosquito site. It caused the island's first dengue outbreak, running from late September 2012 to early March 2013, with roughly 2,168 probable cases and 1,080 laboratory-confirmed cases, described as the first dengue outbreak in Europe since 1928. The mosquito's established presence is concentrated on the southern coast: Funchal, Câmara de Lobos, Santa Cruz, Ponta do Sol and Calheta, with a single non-established sighting in Porto Moniz.

Surveillance runs on a weekly egg-trap network across all municipalities, and activity increases above 21 degrees Celsius. Use repellent in the southern municipalities in warm months.

Tap Water

The regional utility ARM states its supplied water is of excellent quality, controlled under an approved Water Quality Control Plan. ARM supplies water in bulk across the region except São Vicente and Porto Moniz, and provides retail water directly only in Câmara de Lobos, Machico, Porto Santo, Ribeira Brava and Santana. Funchal's water is managed by the city's own municipal utility.

Here is the plain negative finding: no official page we read states plainly that tap water is safe to drink anywhere on the island. We leave it there and let you decide with your pharmacist or hotel.

The Gaps, Listed

We could not find these on any official page, and we will not fill the gaps with borrowed numbers.

• A crime rate or crime statistic for the region of Madeira.
• Any official reading of safety at night or for solo female travellers.
• What a visitor pays at the public emergency department.
• A beach flag colour legend or bathing season dates on the Funchal maritime authority page.
• An airport wind-speed threshold for diversions or cancellations.
• A current duty-pharmacy list for six of the eleven municipalities, and the duty tool returned no information for the day checked in the five it covers.
• Whether the pandemic-era regional health line 800 24 24 20 still operates as a general health advice line.