.png)
Whatever country you choose to get a VISA in, it will probably require a Medical Health Certificate (with your doctor's letterhead, signature and stamp) to be included as part of your visa application.
We needed a health certificate for our Non Lucrative Visa Application, but when going through our non lucrative Spanish visa process, I had NO IDEA what this document was or where to get it.
My frustratingly fruitless google searches led me to start this very blog- so that anyone else going through the visa application process would hopefully have a bit more information. 😅
Hopefully this post will help answer some of the questions about the visa medical health certificate.
I know I had several unanswered questions, starting with the basics, such as:
What is a visa medical health certificate?
Before moving, I searched high and low for an example of this document.
I couldn't find much information in my search, so I thought this might be a great opportunity to actually SHOW you the letter we ended up submitting to our Spanish consulate for our non lucrative visa in Spain.
(And they approved it just fine! Woohoo!)
I also want to mention that you are going to need TWO different 'medical/health' requirements for most visa applications, and when I was first researching this it became very confusing because I didn't know which was which.
So ONE requirement you will need is the 'Medical Health Certificate' which we're talking about in this post now, and the SECOND requirement is 'medical health INSURANCE' for when you arrive in your destination country (such as Spain).
I do have a separate post about health insurance for a visa, but I wanted to clarify that these two requirements are NOT the same and don't overlap!
The medical health certificate is a signed, stamped letter from your doctor. (The other is an actual health insurance policy for going to the doctor/hospital/etc.)
Hopefully, that makes sense, because I remember being very confused when trying to figure out exactly what these things were and what specifically was needed.
(In fact, as I mentioned above that was a HUGE motivator for starting this blog, because it seemed like I had so many unanswered questions when we were moving overseas with kids and no-one to ask!)
Now that we've got that clarified- let's talk about what the medical health certificate actually looks like.
What is an example of a visa medical health certificate?
Here is an example of our medical health certificate letter, stamped and signed from our doctor.
In order to get our medical health certificate from the doctor, I simply made an appointment for each of our family members to get a physical, and gave my basic printed wording example to the doctor, explaining what was needed and why.
They then used my template wording, drafted it up on their official letterhead and I was able to pick up the letters within a few days! :) Awesome!
It was much easier to literally just GIVE our doctor the exact wording I wanted so there was no confusion.
IMPORTANT:
Check your consulate website to see what they require for the wording on this document, as each country might have their own specific visa requirements.
The consulate website should be pretty clear about what is needed, and there are fairly straightforward requirements world-wide on what this letter is used for and what wording it needs to have.
I copied and pasted the exact wording, then translated it into Spanish (because we were moving to Spain) and printed a sample for the doctor.
Be sure to match your wording to what your specific consulate requires, and you should be fine.
What should the medical health certificate for my visa application SAY?
If you'd like to copy/paste my wording, here is what I wrote (and then translated into Spanish) on our health certificates:
"To Whom It May Concern: This health certificate verifies that __your name__ does not suffer from any illnesses that could cause serious repercussions to public health according to the specifications of the international sanitary regulation of 2005."
Be sure to have yours printed on the doctor's official letterhead, signed and stamped with their official medical stamp. (I know I said this already, but just want to make sure you remember so it doesn't cause you any headaches later!)
That's it! Pretty straightforward, right?
I find it a bit funny now, when looking back on our journey of moving abroad with children (and our subsequent family world travel)- because this is THE document that really sparked an entire blog into creation!
The medical health certificate in itself is a pretty simple document- but yet it gave me so many headaches going around in circles just to figure out what it was! 😂
So hopefully, this post helped to explain a few things for you as well.
The other big visa application document I wasn't sure about was the letter of intent- so I prioritized writing that blog post as well. You can see our letter of intent example here.
Feel free to check out our other Visa Application posts (here's our main list of non lucrative visa documents) to see other visa requirements and their explanations.
You can also download our free visa prep checklist to help you stay organized with all of the different requirements and documents needed! 😉
Also, if you have ANY questions about this (or any of the other requirements/documents) please feel free to comment them below or reach out! I'm here to help however I can!
Liked this post? Check out more of our similar tips, tricks & info! 👇👇👇
Thanks for reading our blog!
We love sharing our adventures with you and hope we can help make your move abroad with family easier!
Check out our posts for tips for family travel on a budget and moving abroad with children.
Don't forget to check out our SHOP for helpful organization tools, and follow us social media! (Links are below!)
P.S.- You can help support our blog for FREE by shopping for your fave travel gear on Amazon via our referral link!
Thank you so much! 🥰
Click HERE to jump back to top of page.
