A Medical Emergency on an Island
Dial 112 anywhere in Greece, or 166 for the ambulance service direct. That reaches EKAB, the national emergency care service, and its ground and air transport is free. What follows depends on where you are standing: most Greek islands have a health centre rather than a hospital, so a serious case is stabilised there and then moved by helicopter, aircraft or boat to a hospital on Syros, Rhodes, Crete or the mainland. EKAB flew 1,321 such missions in 2025, carrying 2,166 patients.
The number is 112
One number covers everything, and it is the same number across Europe. Dialling 112 in Greece reaches the police, the fire service and the ambulance service, free of charge, from any telephone including a locked mobile with no local card in it.
The direct line to the ambulance service is 166. It reaches EKAB, the National Centre for Emergency Care, which is the state body that runs emergency medicine outside hospitals and decides where a patient goes.
EKAB transport is free. That includes the ambulance, and it includes an urgent air transfer from an island to a mainland hospital where the condition is life-threatening. Nobody is asked for a card at the point of collection.
The decision about where a patient is taken belongs to EKAB, not to the caller. A private clinic on the island may be nearer and better appointed; a case that needs a hospital goes to the public hospital on duty.
A health centre is not a hospital
This is the fact that changes how a summer on an island should be planned, and it is not obvious from a map.
General hospitals sit on a small number of Greek islands — Crete, Rhodes, Syros, Corfu, Lesbos, Chios and Samos among them. Everywhere else has a health centre, a primary-care unit with doctors on duty, and often a small regional surgery in an outlying village.
A health centre does a great deal. It resuscitates, stabilises, sets a fracture, stitches, gives fluids and drugs, and holds a patient until transport arrives. What it does not do is major surgery, cardiac intervention or intensive care.
So the shape of a serious emergency on Mykonos, Paros, Antiparos, Folegandros or Patmos is always the same. The patient is treated where they are, and then the patient is moved.
How a serious case leaves an island
Three ways, chosen by EKAB’s coordinating centre according to the condition, the hour and what is available.
By helicopter. The fastest route, and the one that reaches a place with no runway. EKAB’s helicopters are flown for it by the Hellenic Air Force — including 2 aeroplanes and 2 helicopters donated by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, which EKAB owns and the Air Force operates — with Army Aviation helicopters in support. Two Leonardo AW139 aircraft were added to the aeromedical fleet, one covering the Dodecanese from Rhodes and one covering the Ionian and western Greece from Aktio.
By aeroplane, where the island has a runway and the case allows a slightly longer chain of transfers.
By sea. The Cyclades ran on sea ambulances for years, and still do when nothing can fly. A dedicated helicopter service began operating from the old airport at Paros in April 2025, run by a non-profit foundation and flying two Airbus H135s, and its first transfers were Paros to Athens and Kimolos to Syros — which is a fair picture of the geography. Syros is the hospital for the Cyclades.
The volume is real rather than theoretical. EKAB carried out 1,321 aeromedical missions in 2025 and moved 2,166 patients, against 1,391 missions and 2,184 patients the year before.
What decides whether the aircraft flies
Four things, and none of them can be bought.
The weather. The meltemi that makes a July afternoon pleasant on a terrace is the same wind that grounds a helicopter, and it blows hardest in exactly the weeks a family is most likely to be there. See what the meltemi is.
The light. Not every landing site on every island is usable at night.
Availability. The fleet is small and the sea is large. On an August evening several islands may be asking at once.
The clinical picture. A transfer carries its own risk, and a patient who is unstable is sometimes safer held and treated where they are until they can travel.
A family that understands those four things in advance has a much better conversation with the doctor at the health centre than one that arrives expecting an aircraft on demand.
Getting home is a different question
Two things get confused, and they are paid for differently and decided by different people.
Emergency evacuation is the move from the island to a Greek hospital. EKAB decides it and the state pays for it.
Repatriation is the move from that Greek hospital to a hospital at home. It is a commercial air ambulance flight, arranged between a private operator, the treating hospital and an insurer, and it happens once the patient is stable enough to fly rather than at the moment of the emergency. An EHIC or a UK GHIC covers state treatment in Greece on the same terms as a Greek resident. Neither covers repatriation, and neither covers a private clinic.
That gap is the whole reason a travel policy matters, and it is worth reading the repatriation clause of one rather than assuming it.
What to establish before you travel
- Find the nearest health centre and the nearest hospital for each island on the itinerary, and know which one is which. The distinction is the plan.
- Check the repatriation cover in the policy, and check that it names the countries in the itinerary.
- Carry an EHIC or GHIC if you hold one, and carry a current medication list translated into Greek.
- Establish who on the party can get a boat at three in the morning, because that is the fallback when nothing flies.
- Ask the house manager or the captain where the defibrillator is, on the first day rather than on a bad one.