Australia
Health & Medical Emergencies
Last verified August 15, 2026
Written for U.S. passport holders
Emergency Numbers
- Dial 000 (Triple Zero) for ambulance, police, or fire, a single unified number. From a mobile phone, 112 also works and routes to the same service.
- You'll hear a recorded message confirming your call is connecting, then a live operator asks which service you need and stays on the line until you're connected.
- For U.S. consular emergency assistance (a detained or hospitalized American, coordinating care, notifying family), call the State Department's Overseas Citizens Services from anywhere in the world: +1-888-407-4747 (from the U.S. or Canada) or +1-202-501-4444 (from overseas). This is separate from the local emergency number and won't dispatch an ambulance itself, but it's the number that gets the U.S. government involved.
Getting Treated as a Foreigner
- Australia has Reciprocal Health Care Agreements covering medically necessary treatment for visitors from 11 specific countries (the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, and several EU countries among them). The United States is not on that list.
- As a U.S. tourist, you're not covered by Medicare or any reciprocal arrangement; you're paying out of pocket or through your own travel insurance for any treatment, including ambulance transport in some states, which isn't automatically free the way it is in a few other countries on this site.
The Gotcha
It's worth knowing specifically that the U.S. is not one of the 11 countries with a Reciprocal Health Care Agreement with Australia (the UK, Ireland, and New Zealand, among others, are), so don't assume some background 'Australia and the U.S. are close allies' logic extends to healthcare access. It doesn't; you're in the same position as a tourist from any other non-agreement country, fully reliant on your own insurance.
Sources
This page was drafted from the primary sources below. Rules change, so check the linked page directly before relying on any of this.
- How to Call Triple Zero (000) (Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sport and the Arts, Australia)
- Reciprocal Health Care Agreements (Services Australia)
- Help Abroad (Overseas Citizens Services) (U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs)