India's e-Medical Visa: who can apply online, and who cannot
Nigeria, Ethiopia, Uganda and Turkmenistan are not on India's e-Visa list and must use the regular Medical Visa. How to check, and what the application needs.
Most websites about medical travel to India tell you to apply for an e-Medical Visa online. For a large number of our patients, that advice is simply wrong, and following it wastes a fee and several days.
India’s e-Visa is open only to passport holders of countries on an official eligibility list published by the Bureau of Immigration. The list has around 170 entries, and some significant countries are missing from it.
Check your own passport first
The list lives on the government’s own portal, at indianvisaonline.gov.in/evisa, under the link “Countries/Regions who are eligible to avail eVisa”. Open it and look for your country by name. It is revised from time to time, so check it yourself rather than trusting any agency, including us.
Of the countries we work with most:
| Can apply online | Cannot apply online |
|---|---|
| Tanzania, Mozambique, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Kyrgyzstan | Nigeria, Ethiopia, Uganda, Turkmenistan |
If your country is in the right-hand column, the online e-Visa is not available to you at all. You apply instead for a regular Medical Visa through the Indian High Commission or Embassy in your country. That is a normal, well-trodden process — it is just not an online one.
This matters because it is a common way to be cheated. If a website offers to sell a Nigerian passport holder an “India e-visa”, it is selling something the Indian government does not currently issue to them.
The order that actually works
Whichever route applies to you, the sequence is the same, and almost everyone gets it wrong:
- Send your medical reports and get a specialist’s opinion.
- Receive a written cost estimate.
- The hospital issues a letter on its letterhead, giving the date or likely date of admission.
- Only then apply for the visa.
The application — online or at a mission — requires that hospital letter. You cannot complete it without one. Applying first costs you the fee and gains you nothing, and it is the single most common expensive mistake we see.
Do not book flights until the visa is actually issued, either.
What the online application needs
For those who are eligible, the e-Medical Visa application asks you to upload:
- The photograph and biographical page of your passport, scanned.
- The hospital’s letter on its letterhead, showing the date or tentative date of admission.
The portal accepts applications from 120 days before travel, up to a minimum of four days before you fly. Do not leave it to the final week. Fees and validity change from time to time, so confirm the current terms on the portal before paying.
Bringing someone with you
India grants a maximum of two medical attendant visas against one medical visa, and the attendant visa runs for sixty days from arrival. Apply for it at the same time as your own, not afterwards.
For a transplant, expect the paperwork to be considerably heavier, because the family relationship to the donor has to be proved and certified. That is the slowest part of the entire process, so start it first rather than last.
If you are not sure
Send us your reports and we will tell you which route applies to your passport, and what the hospital letter needs to say. There is no charge for that, and no obligation to travel.