There is no single Omani health card. There is a Ministry of Health medical fitness examination that conditions your residence card, a municipal card or certificate that conditions certain kinds of work, and health insurance that pays for treatment. They are issued by different bodies, for different reasons, at different prices.
Three documents, constantly confused
Before anything else, work out which one you are actually being asked for. The word people use — health card — is attached to at least two of these and sometimes to the third.
| Document | Who issues it | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Medical fitness examination | Ministry of Health | A condition of a work visa and of renewing a residence card |
| Health card or health certificate | Your municipality, or the zone authority | A condition of working in food handling or personal care |
| Health insurance (Dhamani) | Private insurers, regulated by the Financial Services Authority | Paying for treatment |
In Qatar and the UAE a health card is a card giving you access to public healthcare. In Oman it is an occupational fitness clearance for people who handle food or work on other people's bodies. They are not the same document and they are not for the same purpose.
Search the Arabic term and the results fill with Qatar's PHCC and Hamad, Saudi municipal health certificates, Sharjah and Ajman. One English search we ran returned Prince Edward Island's provincial health card. If a page mentions PHCC, Hamad, balady, EHS or MOHRE, it is not describing Oman.
The residency medical fitness test: who has to take it
The clearest official answer comes from the Royal Oman Police rather than the Ministry of Health. The ROP visa rules require, for a work visa, the original and a copy of a medical certificate attested by the Ministry of Health for nationals of certain countries. Eleven are named:
- India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Sri Lanka
- Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Syria, Nepal
Two age rules run alongside it: children under 16 are not required to obtain the form for visit or residence visas, and a person under 18 cannot register for a work visa at all.
Two routes: before you travel, or after you arrive
If you are recruited from abroad, the examination is normally done in your home country at a Gulf-approved medical centre and then attested in Oman. The Ministry of Health's Pre-Arrival Medical Report Attestation Service is linked electronically to the Wafid system, which is the Gulf Health Council's approved-medical-centre programme. Attestation of a Wafid e-report costs OMR 2 and is quoted at five minutes; a report issued inside Oman for a change to a work visa costs OMR 5 and is attested on Ministry of Health approval.
If you are already in Oman, or renewing, you use the post-arrival route. The fee is OMR 30 for a non-food handler and OMR 40 for a food handler. The same two figures appear on the gov.om service record in both English and Arabic and on the Ministry of Health's own service page.
- Submit the request
- Print the examination report
- Undergo the confirmatory tests
- Pay
- Receive the QR code
- Attend the medical centre
- Results uploaded
- Results approved
The form is valid for 30 days from the date it is issued, so do not pull it early. gov.om gives an indicative completion time of five days for the whole service; the Ministry of Health quotes ten minutes for the registration step itself. For renewal you need the resident card, the sponsor's ID card and the labour-force form; for self-registration, an ID card and passport, with login by ID card or mobile PKI.
A Sanad office is the official channel for this one
This is unusual enough to state plainly. The Ministry of Health lists the delivery channels for the post-arrival medical fitness service as the eHealth Portal and Sanad Services Centre. When the Ministry launched the Medical Fitness System at COMEX on 27 May 2024, it said residents may complete the attestation at Sanad offices rather than visiting Ministry examination centres.
That reflects a change made with effect from 1 November 2022. The Ministry announced then that the OMR 30 application form is obtained from Sanad Offices, while two other charges were cancelled: the private health institution's examination fee, and the Ministry's own results-approval fee. Results are uploaded and approved electronically, with the report collected within 24 hours.
Two official sources describe it differently. The Ministry of Health's November 2022 announcement frames OMR 30 as the form fee, with the examination itself free at the private centre. gov.om and the Ministry's service page present OMR 30 and OMR 40 as the service fee, with no mention of a free examination.
Both are official and no source reconciles them. The likeliest reading is that the 30 or 40 is the form and registration fee and the centre is paid by the Ministry — but no page says that, so we are not asserting it. Ask what the payment covers before you pay it.
What is actually tested
One component is confirmed by an Omani official announcement: latent tuberculosis screening has been added to the medical fitness certification for residency. The method described is a tuberculin skin test on the forearm or a TB blood test, together with a chest radiograph.
A positive latent TB result is not disqualifying. The published pathway is a chest X-ray at an accredited private centre, then a visit to a government Medical Fitness Centre for physician evaluation and the start of treatment — and treatment for latent tuberculosis is free of charge at the Ministry of Health. That is worth knowing, because fear of this test keeps people from renewing on time.
Beyond latent TB, we cannot tell you what is on the list, because no reachable Omani government page publishes it. This is a genuine gap, not an oversight in our research.
Two documents would answer it, and we name them so you can go and look. The Ministry of Health's procedures manual for the medical fitness examination of expatriates (2022), issued by the Directorate General of Disease Surveillance and Control, and the Gulf Health Council's sixth-edition regulation on the medical examination of arrivals to the GCC states for work or residence. Both exist. Neither could be opened from our connection — they were refused in transit, not missing at source.
So treat every published Oman medical test list with suspicion. The pages that rank for it are visa-agent and appointment-booking sites, not government ones, and several of them are visibly repeating criteria from other Gulf states. We would rather tell you the panel is unpublished than copy a list we cannot trace. If those two documents become retrievable we will rewrite this section and move the verification date at the top of the page — that is what the date is for.
The same gap runs through the consequences. There is no published list of conditions that cause a fail, and no published appeal or re-examination route. The only codified consequence of a failed medical we located anywhere in Omani law is administrative: Ministerial Decision 602/2025, Article 13(1) allows a refund of the work permit fee where the worker fails the medical examination.
The municipal health card is a different document
This one has nothing to do with your residence card. Its legal basis is Ministerial Decision 29/2016, the regulation of health requirements for activities related to public health. Article 9, item ninth is the operative text, and it establishes four things:
- Workers must hold valid health cards issued by the municipality.
- The card certifies that they are free of infectious diseases.
- Periodic medical examinations must be carried out on them.
- Workers in food establishments must complete a training course determined by the municipality.
Now the important part. It fixes none of the four things you would need in order to plan: no validity period, no list of tests, no course syllabus or duration, and no fee. The activities it covers are food activities — restaurants, cafés, fast food, mobile cafés, public kitchens, shawarma and grills, pastries, bakeries.
Muscat says health certificate, not health card
Muscat has its own instrument, and its wording differs in ways that explain a lot of the confusion. Muscat Municipality Decision 219/2019 issues its own regulation of health requirements for public-health-related activities, and it requires health certificates rather than health cards, issued by the competent authority rather than by the municipality.
- Article 2, item ninth (b) — valid health certificates from the competent authority, certifying that workers are free of infectious diseases.
- Article 13(b) — men's personal-care centres: all workers must hold a health certificate from the competent authority.
- Article 18(c) — women's hairdressing and beauty: medical examinations must be carried out annually to establish medical fitness.
- Article 22(d) — women's beauty centres: annual medical examinations of workers, for fitness and freedom from infectious disease.
Two things follow. Personal-care and beauty workers in Muscat are expressly covered, which the 2016 regulation does not do. And the annual interval in Articles 18 and 22 is the only published periodicity we found anywhere in the Omani instruments — the 2016 regulation says only periodic. Penalties are not in Decision 219/2019 itself; it cross-refers to Muscat Municipality Decision 55/2017 on administrative sanctions.
The Muscat fee: absent, and we can show you where
It is easy to say a fee is not published. It is better to show the document that should contain it. Muscat Municipality Decision 1/2018 determines the fees, prices, deposits and financial guarantees collected by Muscat Municipality — it is the fee schedule.
Across its Annexes 1 to 12 there is no line item for a health card, a health certificate, a medical examination or worker health screening. The annexes cover agriculture, forestry and fishing; mining and quarrying; manufacturing; electricity, gas and steam; water, sewerage and waste; construction; and wholesale and retail. Health and medical fees are simply not in it.
The municipality's e-services portal lists Health Affairs as one of its service families but publishes no health card page, form or fee behind it, and the public FAQ does not mention the card at all.
The requirement to hold the card is in law. The price of it is not in the fee schedule, not on the e-services portal, and not in the FAQ.
Practically: expect to be quoted a figure at the counter or by the examining centre, and expect it to vary. Do not plan against any number you read online for Muscat, including a number an agent gives you confidently.
Duqm and Madayn run their own schemes
Two authorities publish more than Muscat does, because they operate their own zones.
| Scheme | Fee | What is published |
|---|---|---|
| Muscat Municipality | Not published | Requirement only; no validity, tests, syllabus or fee |
| Duqm (SEZAD) | OMR 10 | Food handlers; five working days; validity not stated |
| Madayn industrial estates | Free | One day; the medical examination must not be older than three months |
The Duqm card is described as issued to food handlers on the strength of a medical examination by an approved authority confirming absence of infectious diseases, administered through the zone's One Stop Shop. The Madayn card appears on gov.om as Get or Renew Workers Health Card, with the Public Establishment for Industrial Estates as the provider and a fee of zero. Together with Muscat these are three different schemes for the same idea: there is no national health card in Oman.
One practical note on our own service. Muscat Municipality's agreement with Sanad covers eight services — tenancy contract renewal forms, municipal licence renewal, parking permits and their renewal, parking fines, supplier registration, printing a quotation request form, and building licence certificate renewal. The health card is not among them. So we can do your medical fitness form; we cannot issue you a municipal health card.
Health insurance is not a health card
Dhamani is the mandatory health insurance project run under the Financial Services Authority. Decision 83/2023 regulates the electronic linkage of the health insurance system, and the platform launched in the final quarter of 2024, with private hospitals and then clinics being connected to it. It is about who pays for treatment, and nothing we found links it to residence card issuance or to a municipal health card.
Separately, Article 57 of the Labour Law obliges an employer to bear the costs of treatment, medication and hospital stay where the worker is not covered by health insurance, and requires establishments with 200 or more workers to employ a qualified nurse or contract health services. We could not open the Financial Services Authority's own Dhamani pages, so we are not stating a date from which cover became compulsory. Our health insurance guide goes further into it.
What the official record does not say
- The medical fitness test panel, beyond latent TB screening — the two documents that contain it were unreachable.
- Which conditions cause a fail, and what happens then, beyond the work permit fee refund under MD 602/2025.
- Any appeal or re-examination route against an unfit result.
- The Muscat health card fee, validity period, test list and training syllabus — none of the four is published.
- The validity period of the Duqm card, and which bodies are approved to examine for it.
- Whether Ministerial Decision 29/2016 has been amended since; we found no amendment touching the health card provisions.
Is the Oman health card the same as the medical fitness test?
Who has to take the medical fitness test in Oman?
How much does the medical fitness examination cost in Oman?
What is tested in the Oman medical fitness examination?
Does a positive TB test stop you getting residency in Oman?
How much does a municipal health card cost in Muscat?
If you need it done
The medical fitness form is the one we can genuinely take off your hands, because a Sanad office is an official channel for it rather than a convenience. Bring the resident card, the sponsor's ID and the labour-force form, and remember the form dies after 30 days. For a municipal health card, the counter to ask at is your own municipality, and we would rather tell you that than quote you a fee nobody publishes.