Walk into any Egyptian pharmacy and say you have an upset stomach and you will be handed a box of Antinal, usually without a question. It is the most common medical interaction a visitor has on this coast, and almost nothing written in English explains what is in the box.
Almost everyone calls it food poisoning and almost nobody has it. The common case is ordinary travellers’ diarrhoea — unfamiliar bacteria arriving via water, ice, washed salad or a hand that touched something, in a gut that has never met them. True toxin food poisoning from a specific bad dish exists, but it is a minority of what happens on this coast, and blaming last night’s fish is usually wrong about both the cause and the fix.
Sudden violent vomiting sweeping through a resort over two or three days is the signature of norovirus, which spreads person to person and by surfaces — lift buttons, buffet tongs, pool handrails — not by food. It is ferociously contagious and passes in a day or two. The response that works is handwashing with soap (alcohol gel is poor against norovirus), staying out of the pool and off the buffet while ill, and rehydrating hard.
At home, a day of diarrhoea is miserable and self-limiting. At 38°C with a sea breeze hiding how much you are sweating, the same illness dehydrates you far faster, and dehydration is what actually puts visitors in a clinic. This is the single reason to take a stomach upset more seriously on this coast than you would at home — and the reason rehydration, not medication, is the priority.
Egyptian pharmacies are excellent, everywhere, open late, and function as the first line of care rather than the last — a pharmacist is genuinely knowledgeable and consulting one is normal, not a fallback. They will also sell you almost anything without a prescription. Both halves of that are true at once: use them, and understand that a recommendation across a counter is not a diagnosis.
Start when you are hungry rather than to a schedule, with plain starch — bread, rice, potato, plain pasta. Skip the dairy for a day or two, since the enzyme that handles it is often the last thing to come back. Alcohol and a big buffet are the two things most likely to restart it. And keep drinking after the symptoms stop, because the deficit takes longer to refill than it did to create.
Five things you will be offered, and what each one is actually doing. This describes them; it does not tell you what to take, and the first one is the only one that treats what actually harms people.
Glucose and electrolyte powder (ORS)
Watch out for: Mix with bottled or boiled water, at the dilution on the packet — stronger is not better. Sip continuously rather than drinking a lot at once. If you cannot keep fluids down at all, that is a doctor, not a stronger sachet.
Nifuroxazide
Watch out for: The gap that matters: the children’s syrup an Egyptian pharmacy will cheerfully sell for a toddler is a formulation France withdrew. If it is for a child, ask a doctor rather than a pharmacy counter. Stop immediately and get help for any rash, swelling or breathing difficulty.
Loperamide
Watch out for: Not with a high fever, and not with blood or mucus in the stool — in an invasive infection, slowing everything down keeps the problem in. Not for young children. If you need it for more than a day or two, the answer is a doctor rather than another box.
Diosmectite
Watch out for: Take it well apart from any other medicine — it binds those too, and will reduce the absorption of anything swallowed alongside it, including antibiotics and the contraceptive pill.
Azithromycin, ciprofloxacin and others
Watch out for: Self-prescribing here has three costs: side effects, a course that may be wrong for the organism, and a contribution to the resistance that already makes some of these drugs less useful in this region than they were. Ask a doctor. Clinics on this coast are quick and used to exactly this.
Any one of these means medical care rather than another trip to the pharmacy counter. Clinics here are quick, everywhere, and used to exactly this.
What is worth eating here, how ordering actually works, and the handful of food-safety rules that matter — in the food guide rather than repeated here.
The food guide →This is general guidance from people who live here, not medical, legal or security advice. For anything acute, get a doctor — the coast has good clinics and decompression chambers. Before you travel, check your own government’s current advice, and once here, follow local beach closures and dive-centre briefings: they know about today’s conditions, and this page cannot.