Kidney care and dialysis planning from Nigeria

What a nephrologist can see from the results you already have

More than most patients expect. The trend in your creatinine and eGFR across months, urine protein studies, an ultrasound report, a kidney biopsy report where one exists, your blood pressure record and your medication list together describe most kidney cases well enough for a considered second opinion. That review can address whether the staging is right, whether the cause has been identified rather than assumed, whether your medication and blood pressure targets match accepted practice, and whether the timing or the modality of dialysis deserves rethinking. A $50 video consultation or a $150 written second opinion buys that from home with no visa involved. For a good number of people the useful conclusion is a better plan carried out in Nigeria, and we would rather write that down than sell a journey.

Travelling while you are on dialysis

Dialysis does not pause for a flight, and this is the corridor detail most agents skip past. Nothing flies direct between Lagos or Abuja and an Indian city; the Lagos–Mumbai route stopped operating in 2024, so every itinerary transits Addis Ababa, Doha, Dubai or Nairobi and the door-to-door time is long. The trip therefore has to be built backwards from your dialysis schedule: the last session before departure, the first session after arrival, and confirmed slots across the whole stay booked before anyone buys a ticket rather than after. Sessions during a treatment stay are also a real cost that a package figure tends to swallow, so we ask for them itemized per session in the quote. Whether you are fit to make the journey at all is your nephrologist's judgement, and if the answer is no then that is the answer.

Transplant: the paperwork comes before the medicine

If a transplant is being discussed, the sequence for a Nigerian patient passes through several authorities before it ever reaches an operating theatre. Indian law permits transplantation for foreign patients only from a legally eligible living donor who is a near relative, and the relationship has to be documented and verified rather than asserted: attestation by your home authorities and the foreign ministry before departure, then routing through the Nigerian High Commission in New Delhi (including an embassy no-objection certificate verifying the identities of both patient and donor), and only then a hospital authorization committee that decides whether the transplant may proceed at all. Because most of that attestation happens in Delhi, the journey usually carries a Delhi leg on top of the in-person visa. We explain this process and pass documents between you and the hospital; we never source, match or introduce a donor, and where a situation does not fit the law we say so and stop.

The quote lines a kidney case should never leave blank

Kidney treatment tends to be a series of things rather than one thing, which makes a single package figure especially uninformative. Ask for the nephrology consultations, the laboratory panels and how often they repeat, imaging, a biopsy and its pathology where one is planned, access surgery such as an AV fistula, each dialysis session, and the medicines, each on a line of its own. Ask as well what changes if the stay extends. We ask hospitals to write it that way before you travel and set aside those that will not. We do not quote transplant prices on this site at all; where a case is transplant-related, every figure comes from the hospital in writing, directly to you, and the money goes from you to the hospital against that invoice and no other.

Funding a condition that does not end

Chronic kidney disease asks for money repeatedly, which changes what a funding plan has to look like. Nigerian families commonly assemble it from extended family, a church or community committee and local crowdfunding platforms (GoFundMe does not support organisers in Nigeria), with a relative in the UK, the US or the Gulf often paying the hospital directly in pounds or dollars. Where the money leaves a Nigerian account instead, the official route is a Form A application, which your bank will only process against the hospital's own invoice and admission letter, and which the January 2025 foreign-exchange code did nothing to speed up; check where it currently stands with your bank before you count on it. Our fee is published, set in dollars, credited in full from each step to the next and invoiced separately, so nobody funding you has to wonder which part of a bill is ours.

What to prepare

• Your creatinine and eGFR results over time rather than one recent reading, because the trend is what a nephrologist reads
• Urine protein or albumin studies, a recent ultrasound report, and the kidney biopsy report if a biopsy has been done
• Your dialysis record if you are on dialysis: modality, how long you have been on it, session frequency and access history
• A complete medication list including blood pressure drugs, and a note of anything stopped because of your kidneys
• A referral letter from the Nigerian hospital treating you, and the certified bank statements the mission requires with the application
• If a family donor is being discussed, the documents that prove the relationship. This is where transplant timelines are lost