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From Tanzania · Nephrology & Kidney Care

Kidney care in India, and what the transplant law requires

Kidney disease gives a family two conversations at once: what is happening now, and what happens when the kidneys stop. Most Tanzanian patients who write to us are somewhere in that middle ground: creatinine climbing, dialysis raised as a possibility or already started, and a relative who has said they would donate. The honest sequence is to settle the first conversation before the second, because much of what decides when dialysis becomes necessary can be reviewed from reports you already hold, and because the transplant route carries legal requirements that govern the timeline more than any hospital does. This page sets out both, plainly, including the parts that will disappoint some readers.

We take no commissions from hospitals. Our fees are paid by you, published upfront, and itemized separately from your hospital bill. Full details on the Fees page.

Share your case The full Tanzania guide
A family in Tanzania with documents and luggage, beginning a planned medical journey to India.

Published fees, same from every country

  • Remote consultation (teleconsult) $50
  • Written independent second opinion $150
  • Full journey coordination $1,000

INR equivalents are approximate, at about ₹86 per US dollar. The USD figure is the fee.

Every fee is credited in full to the next step: the $50 consultation fee comes off the $150 second opinion, and the $150 second-opinion fee comes off the $1,000 full journey fee. You never pay twice for moving forward.

Numbers, not an examination, drive a kidney review

Kidney disease is followed in figures, and figures travel well. A run of creatinine and eGFR results over time, a urine protein measurement, an ultrasound report, your blood pressure record, the medicines you take and a biopsy report where one exists allow a nephrologist to say how fast things are moving, whether the staging and current management are in line with accepted practice, and whether the timing or the modality of dialysis (haemodialysis or peritoneal) deserves a rethink. A $50 video consultation or a $150 written opinion covers that from home, with no travel involved at all. Where the answer is that your care in Tanzania is already on the right lines and the next step is a blood test rather than a flight, we would rather tell you not to travel: kidney disease is managed over years, and most of those years are lived at home.

Booking dialysis around a five-flight week

If you are on dialysis, the sessions are the first thing on the itinerary rather than the last. A trip to India for a workup, an access procedure or a transplant evaluation has to be built around your dialysis schedule: sessions arranged at the destination for the whole stay, and the days around the flight itself planned with the unit that treats you at home. The Dar es Salaam–Mumbai non-stop runs about five times a week and is currently the only direct service, so a session that must happen on one day and a flight that leaves on the next is a genuine constraint, not a detail to sort out later. We arrange the dialysis slots in India as part of the stay and put them in the quote as their own line, priced per session, so that nobody discovers them at discharge.

The transplant law, stated plainly

Indian law permits a transplant for a foreign patient only from a donor who is legally eligible (in practice a near relative you already have), and it requires that relationship to be proved rather than asserted. The documents are attested by your own authorities in Tanzania before departure, then routed through your high commission in New Delhi, which issues a certificate verifying the identities of patient and donor; only then can the hospital's authorization committee consider the case. Paying a donor is a crime. Deceased-donor allocation places foreign nationals after Indian citizens, which is why the near-relative route is the realistic one to plan around. All of this adds weeks to a timeline and usually a Delhi leg to the journey, and we build the schedule around it from the first conversation rather than discovering it late. If anyone offers to arrange a donor for you, walk away from them, and from us if we ever suggested such a thing.

Why kidney cases here tend to end up self-funded

Kidney care is expensive because it is continuous, and continuous costs are where cover runs out. Financing at home has been under visible strain (several large private hospitals suspended services to NHIF members during 2024), and long-running cases increasingly travel on family money, pooled across a committee, a trading-community network, or a relative working abroad. The Ministry of Health does refer some patients abroad, each case reviewed by a panel of doctors against criteria that include cost and direct flights; if you may qualify, ask, and confirm your position with the Ministry rather than with a website. For everyone else the protection is documentation: an itemized hospital quote separating the workup, any access surgery, the dialysis sessions and the exclusions, paid directly to the hospital on its own invoice at rates locked in writing before travel, with our published fee invoiced separately from all of it.

A plain statement of the law: Kidney transplantation in India is governed by the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act (THOTA). For international patients that means the donor must be legally eligible, almost always a near relative; the relationship must be documented and certified through your own country’s embassy, and a hospital authorization committee must approve the transplant before it can proceed. Paying a donor is a crime, deceased-donor allocation places foreign nationals after Indian citizens, and we do not quote transplant prices on this site. We coordinate only within these rules; if your situation does not fit them, we will say so plainly.

Conditions we coordinate care for

  • Chronic kidney disease requiring staging and a management plan
  • Glomerular diseases (nephrotic syndrome, glomerulonephritis)
  • Diabetic kidney disease
  • Polycystic kidney disease
  • Resistant hypertension with kidney involvement
  • Recurrent kidney stones (coordinated with urology)
  • Kidney failure on dialysis, including structured transplant evaluation

Procedures & services we coordinate

  • Comprehensive kidney workup: laboratory panels, imaging, and kidney biopsy where indicated
  • Independent review of dialysis timing and modality (hemodialysis versus peritoneal dialysis)
  • AV fistula creation and dialysis access surgery
  • Dialysis coordination during a treatment stay in India
  • Kidney transplant evaluation, strictly within Indian transplant law (see the note below)
The full Nephrology & Kidney Care page

What to prepare

  • Creatinine and eGFR results over time, meaning the whole run of them and not only the most recent reading
  • Urine protein or albumin-creatinine results, and the kidney ultrasound or other imaging reports
  • The kidney biopsy report if one has ever been done, including the pathology description and not only the conclusion
  • Your dialysis details if you have started: modality, sessions per week, since when, and the unit treating you in Tanzania
  • Blood pressure readings and the full medicine list, including anything bought without a prescription
  • If transplant is being discussed, the exact family relationship of the potential donor, because the law turns on it
  • The name of the nephrologist or clinic in Tanzania who will continue your care between and after any trip

Other specialties, same Tanzania process

Useful guides to read next

Nephrology & Kidney Care from Tanzania: FAQs

Nobody in our family is a match. Is there another route?
Not one anybody can lawfully help you with, and that is the honest answer rather than an unhelpful one. Indian law forbids payment or inducement for organs, so there is no arrangement, agency or introduction that turns an unrelated willing person into a lawful donor; and deceased-donor allocation places foreign nationals after Indian citizens, so it is not a plan you can build a journey on. If someone offers to solve this for you for a fee, they are offering you a crime rather than a service. Where there is no lawful route, we say so and stop, and the sensible conversation becomes dialysis, its modality and how well it is being run.
My cousin wants to donate. Does that count?
That depends on how Indian law defines the relationship, not on how close the two of you are. The requirement is a legally eligible donor (in practice a near relative), and the relationship has to be documented and certified rather than described. Bring the exact relationship to the first conversation, because it decides whether there is a lawful route at all. Where the situation does not fit the rules, we will tell you so plainly instead of taking you through an evaluation that cannot end anywhere; no fee is worth pretending otherwise.
What does a dialysis unit in India need me to bring?
Your current dialysis prescription comes first: the modality, the duration and frequency of sessions, your dry weight, the dialysate and anticoagulation you are on, and your access details. Add your recent blood results, your hepatitis serology status, and a note from the unit treating you in Tanzania. Carry it on paper as well as on a phone. A unit that has this in hand can slot you in around the plan you already have; a unit that does not will spend your first session working out what your own doctors already know.
What does a transplant cost in India?
We do not publish transplant prices, and we would be cautious with anyone who advertises them. Transplant is not a package we sell; it is a legally gated process we coordinate only where the law is clearly satisfied, and any hospital costs come as an itemized quote for your specific case, paid by you directly to the hospital. What is published, and does not change by country or condition, is our own fee: $50 for a remote consultation, $150 for a written second opinion, $1,000 for full journey coordination, each credited in full to the next step.
Do we really need a leg in Delhi?
For a transplant case, usually yes, because the certification is issued by your high commission in New Delhi. That is a paperwork leg rather than a clinical one, and it is why a transplant timeline is measured in weeks of documents before it is measured in days of treatment. We plan it into the itinerary from the start (including where you stay and how dialysis continues while it happens) instead of letting it surprise you halfway through. Requirements do change, so confirm the current ones with your own authorities and the high commission before relying on them.

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