The visitor dialysis planner
Dialysis does not have to end travel. It does have to be planned.
Holiday dialysis is not a booking. It is a clinical handover. Your unit is passing your care to a unit that has never met you, in a country whose infection surveillance it cannot inspect, and both units are managing risk. That is why the paperwork is heavy, why the lead times are long, and why the people who leave it late are the people who do not go.
This page is the whole process, honestly. It includes the one question almost nobody knows to ask, and getting it wrong can cost you six months on the transplant list.
Start far earlier than feels reasonable
This is where most trips fall over. People book the flights, then ask about the chair. Do it the other way round.
Edinburgh Renal Unit
Requests to an overseas unit should go in writing a minimum of six weeks in advance, offering alternative dates.
Kidney Care UK
At least three months for international travel, though units differ.
DaVita
Book at least three months ahead to secure a treatment slot while travelling.
Diaverum
Its booking service confirms availability by email within 72 working hours of a request.
The way to hold it. Six weeks is the floor. Three months is the realistic target. And for a small island with a single documented operator and a finite number of chairs, earlier is strictly better. Peak tourist season is the obvious pinch point, and it is the season most people want to come.
What your home unit has to send
Your unit sends this, not you. But it is worth knowing exactly what is on the list, because chasing it is often the difference between going and not going, and because a missing item is usually why a booking stalls.
- 1
Your virology status
Hepatitis B (HBsAg), hepatitis C and HIV. This is non-negotiable, and it is the first thing any unit will ask for. Host units keep patients who are positive separate from those who are not, and they need to know which side of that line you are on. UK practice is to take virology roughly six to eight weeks before you travel, so it is current when you arrive.
- 2
Recent blood results
Usually taken about four weeks before travel, so they are still current on arrival.
- 3
Your dialysis prescription, in full
The Edinburgh Renal Unit handbook is specific about what that means: dialyser type, dialysate composition, the anticoagulation protocol, your dry weight, and your vascular access type (fistula, graft or line).
- 4
A complete, current medication list
Everything, including the doses. The host unit is taking over your care, and it cannot do that from a partial list.
- 5
A general clinical summary
Your diagnosis, your other conditions, your allergies, and any recent complications.
- 6
Travel insurance that actually covers you
Covering dialysis, your kidney condition as a pre-existing condition, and medical repatriation.
The question nobody tells you to ask
Dialysing abroad can cost you six months on the transplant list
Ask the host unit to confirm, in writing, that it conducts routine virus surveillance and that it segregates patients who are positive for blood-borne viruses. Give that confirmation to your home unit so they can file it.
Here is why it matters so much. If that cannot be confirmed, or if the infection risk is otherwise uncertain, the Edinburgh Renal Unit guidance is that you are treated as though you were positive for a blood-borne virus when you come home. In practice that means being placed in segregated dialysis, and being suspended from the transplant list for six months.
That is a real, concrete, avoidable cost, and almost nobody tells patients about it. It is entirely avoidable by asking one question, early, and getting the answer in writing.
What this means for Seychelles specifically
The encouraging part. AMSA Healthcare, which has managed the haemodialysis service in Seychelles since 2015, states on its own website that it has isolation rooms for patients with hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV. That is exactly the segregation capability the UK guidance tells you to ask about, and it is a good sign.
The honest part. Whether the unit will issue a written confirmation of routine virus surveillance to your referring unit is not something we can verify. It has never been published. It is precisely the question you should put to them, and you should put it early, before you book anything.
Expect to be re-tested when you get home. UK units routinely re-check hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV after dialysis abroad, and swab for MRSA and CPE. That is normal practice, not an accusation. Your team can also check your hepatitis B immunity and vaccinate you before you travel, so ask them.
Insurance, and the trap inside it
DaVita puts it bluntly: Medicare and most insurance companies will not cover dialysis treatment costs if you go abroad, so price the treatments beforehand. Assume you are paying for your sessions unless someone tells you otherwise in writing.
If you are travelling from the UK or Europe, the health card you may be used to relying on is worthless here. Seychelles is outside the area it covers, and Kidney Care UK is explicit that the card was never a replacement for comprehensive travel insurance anyway. Standalone insurance is not optional for this trip.
Declare kidney failure and dialysis as a pre-existing condition. An undeclared policy is a void policy, which means you are uninsured at exactly the moment you find out.
Check the policy covers two separate things: your dialysis sessions, and medical repatriation. On a remote island, repatriation is the genuinely expensive part, and it is the part people forget to check.
Before you book the flights: dialysis anchors you to one island
The documented haemodialysis units in Seychelles are on Mahe and Praslin, which are separate islands. You will be travelling to a chair three times a week, so the island your chair is on decides where you stay, and the island-hopping holiday most visitors imagine is not really compatible with haemodialysis.
Press reporting in 2019 recorded one renal patient living on La Digue, but no dialysis facility on La Digue is documented anywhere we could find. Do not assume there is one.
So the order of operations is: confirm the chair, confirm which island, then book accommodation on that island, then book the flights. Ask the unit how their visiting patients usually get to them. It is a third of your week, and it is not a detail.
The regional pattern, for context
This is not a Seychelles quirk, it is what island dialysis is like. In the Maldives, about 5% of dialysis patients travel 10 to 45 km by sea, by public ferry or speedboat, taking between 30 minutes and 2 hours, to reach their sessions (Kidney360, 2023). Geography is part of the treatment plan in an archipelago.
Work through it
Your travel checklist
Tick these off as you go. Your progress is saved in this browser, so you can come back to it over the months this takes, and you can print the whole thing to take to your kidney team.
Your progress
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Your ticks are saved in this browser, on this device, so you can come back to this over the months it takes to plan. Nothing is sent to us, and nothing is stored on our servers.
Three months before, and earlier is better
As soon as you decide to go
Nothing else on this list matters if there is no chair. Do this part before you fall in love with a hotel. Kidney Care UK and DaVita both advise allowing at least three months for international travel, and the Edinburgh Renal Unit sets six weeks as the absolute minimum for a written request to an overseas unit. Seychelles has a single documented dialysis operator and a finite number of chairs, so early is strictly better, and peak tourist season is the obvious pinch point.
They make the request, not you. Ask them to write to the host unit and to offer alternative dates, which is what the Edinburgh Renal Unit handbook advises.
We are not being coy: whether the Seychelles unit takes visitors has never been published anywhere authoritative, so nobody can tell you but them. Mahe and Praslin are separate islands.
Ignore any price you find on a third-party website, including the ones that quote a figure for Seychelles. The only reliable price is the one the unit quotes you directly.
- Do not skip this one
This is the single most important question on this page, and almost nobody knows to ask it. If your home unit cannot get that confirmation, it may treat you as though you were positive when you come back: segregated dialysis, and suspension from the transplant list for six months. Get it in writing so your unit can file it.
- Do not skip this one
Six months of lost transplant eligibility is a real cost, and it is avoidable if the paperwork is right.
UK practice is to take virology roughly six to eight weeks before you travel, so the results are still current when you arrive. Book it now so the timing works.
- Do not skip this one
Undeclared, a policy is void. DaVita warns that most insurers will not cover dialysis abroad at all. A UK or EU health card is worthless in Seychelles, which is outside the area it covers. On a remote island, repatriation is the expensive part.
- Peritoneal dialysis
Baxter runs a travel service that coordinates delivery abroad, but notice periods vary by destination and can be up to 16 weeks. International destinations typically need a minimum of three months, and some need four or more. Ask them first whether they deliver to Seychelles at all.
- Peritoneal dialysisDo not skip this one
We found no evidence of a peritoneal dialysis programme in Seychelles, and no evidence that there is not one either. Island states often end up haemodialysis only: the Maldives has no peritoneal dialysis programme at all. Ask, and have a plan if the answer is no.
This is the mistake that costs money. The chair comes first, then the holiday.
About one month before
Once the unit has said yes
The slot is provisional until the clinical handover is complete. This is the paperwork phase, and it is your home unit that does most of it. Your job is to check that it actually happened.
So they are current when you arrive. Your virology should already be done or booked.
The pack is: your virology status; your recent bloods; your full dialysis prescription (dialyser type, dialysate composition, anticoagulation protocol, dry weight and access type); your complete current medication list; and a clinical summary with your diagnosis, other conditions, allergies and any recent complications.
Not a phone call you half remember. In writing, with dates.
Dialysis anchors you. The documented units are on Mahe and Praslin, which are separate islands, and you will be making that journey three times a week. Island-hopping and haemodialysis do not mix well.
Ask the unit how their visiting patients usually do it. This is not a trivial detail: it is a third of your week.
Do not assume you can get your usual medicines, or your usual brands, on the island.
The Edinburgh Renal Unit is explicit about this: patients should carry a letter for customs.
- Peritoneal dialysis
Including the volume and the storage conditions. A hotel that has not agreed to it is a foreseeable disaster, and an island customs desk confronted with several hundred litres of sterile fluid is another. Agree storage conditions with your supplier: heat and humidity matter.
- Peritoneal dialysis
Know where you would go and how you would get there, before you need to know.
- Do not skip this one
Your fluid allowance does not automatically go up because you are on a beach. Some people will be told to loosen it, some will not, and it depends on your remaining kidney function and how much fluid you gain between sessions. Kidney Care UK is blunt that there is no one-size-fits-all advice here. Never change your fluid allowance, your diuretics or your blood pressure medicines on your own, even in extreme heat.
Seven days before
The week before you fly
Reconfirm everything. Assume nothing has been passed on, and you will usually be pleasantly surprised.
Dialysis prescription, recent bloods, virology results, medication list, clinical summary, insurance policy and its emergency number, the host unit contact details, and your home unit contact details. Phones run out of battery and roaming fails.
Never in the hold. Bags get lost, and your binders and blood pressure medicines are not optional.
Kidney Care UK flags medication storage as a real problem in hot climates. Ask your pharmacist.
Seychelles is equatorial. If you have had a transplant and take anti-rejection medicines, this is not cosmetic: skin cancer risk is dramatically higher on immunosuppression, and the advice is factor 50 or above, year round, with no sunbathing.
- Peritoneal dialysis
Baxter aims to deliver to the destination at least two working days before you leave home. Carry enough for the journey plus a delay in your bags regardless of what has been shipped.
The person beside you is the one most likely to notice you are unwell.
The day you fly
Travel day
Everything clinical travels with you, in the cabin, on paper.
- Do not skip this one
No blood pressure cuff, no blood tests and no drips in that arm. Anyone treating you needs to know this before they touch you.
And if it is one of the emergency red flags, call the local emergency number instead.
From your first session onwards
At the unit, and coming home
You are a new patient to them, and they have never met you. Help them, and be honest about anything that has changed.
- Do not skip this one
A new infection, a hospital admission, a new medicine, a missed session, a change in your access. They are working from a snapshot, and it may already be out of date.
Ask on day one, calmly, rather than at 2am, urgently.
Your dry weight may be looked at again in a hot climate. That is their call to make with you, and it is a good sign, not a bad one.
UK units routinely re-check hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV, and swab for MRSA and CPE, after dialysis abroad. This is normal and it is not an accusation. It is also why the written confirmation of virus surveillance matters so much.
Travelling on peritoneal dialysis
Peritoneal dialysis is usually the easiest treatment to travel with, because you are not competing for a chair. But it swaps one problem for another: you are not booking a slot, you are moving fluid, and that means freight, storage and customs. The lead times can actually be longer than for haemodialysis.
Read this first if you are on peritoneal dialysis
We found no evidence of a peritoneal dialysis programme in Seychelles. We also found no evidence that there is not one. The documented service describes haemodialysis only. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, so we will not tell you that peritoneal dialysis is unavailable, and we will certainly not tell you that it is available.
Treat peritoneal dialysis support in Seychelles as unproven until the unit confirms it, and plan a haemodialysis fallback in case of peritonitis or a catheter problem.
For a sense of how plausible that gap is: in the Maldives, a comparable Indian Ocean island state, there is no peritoneal dialysis programme at all, and no patients on it (Kidney360, 2023). Island states frequently end up haemodialysis only.
Start with the supplier, not the hotel. Baxter runs a travel service that coordinates delivery of peritoneal dialysis products abroad, gives you the contact details of the nearest office and dialysis centre to where you are staying, and runs a 24-hour support line. Ask them first whether they deliver to Seychelles at all, and what their notice band is for it.
Assume months, not weeks. Notice periods vary by destination and can be up to 16 weeks. For international destinations a minimum of three months is typical, and some destinations require four months or more. Baxter aims to deliver to the destination at least two working days before you leave home, so your supplies are waiting when you arrive.
Get the customs letter. The Edinburgh Renal Unit is explicit that patients should carry a letter for customs. An island customs desk confronted with several hundred litres of sterile fluid is a foreseeable failure mode, and a letter is what prevents it.
Get the storage agreed in writing. The delivery address has to actually accept and store a pallet of fluid. Hotels must agree in writing to receive it, including the volume and the conditions. Heat and humidity are real: agree storage conditions with the supplier rather than hoping.
Carry a buffer regardless. DaVita advises that for trips longer than about ten days you have supplies delivered rather than carried, and that you always bring extra to cover travel delays. Pack enough for the outbound journey plus a delay, in your bags, whatever has been shipped.
One note for home haemodialysis
People on home haemodialysis often assume their machine travels with them. DaVita notes that NxStage does not support its system outside the continental United States, so a patient who brings the machine will be on their own if they need more supplies. Check with your home therapies team before you assume portability.
Ready to ask
Send the unit a proper enquiry
A vague enquiry gets a vague answer, or no answer. This one gives the unit everything it needs to say yes or no quickly, and it asks the ten questions whose answers are not published anywhere.
A message you can send
Copy this, replace everything in square brackets with your own details, and send it to the unit. Tell your own kidney team that you have sent it, because it is they who will have to supply the clinical records it promises.
Subject: Visiting haemodialysis enquiry, [ARRIVAL DATE] to [DEPARTURE DATE] Dear Renal Unit, I am a haemodialysis patient and I hope to visit Seychelles from [ARRIVAL DATE] to [DEPARTURE DATE]. I would like to ask whether you are able to accept a visiting patient for approximately [NUMBER] sessions during that period, and what you would need from my home unit. ABOUT ME Full name (as on passport): [FULL NAME] Date of birth: [DD/MM/YYYY] Country of residence: [COUNTRY] Passport number: [PASSPORT NUMBER] My email: [EMAIL] My telephone (with country code): [TELEPHONE] MY DIALYSIS Home dialysis unit: [UNIT NAME] Unit address: [UNIT ADDRESS] Unit telephone: [UNIT TELEPHONE] Unit email: [UNIT EMAIL] My consultant: [CONSULTANT NAME] Usual schedule: [FOR EXAMPLE, MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY] Usual session length: [FOR EXAMPLE, 4 HOURS] Vascular access: [FISTULA / GRAFT / TUNNELLED CATHETER, AND WHICH SIDE] Virology status: hepatitis B [POSITIVE / NEGATIVE], hepatitis C [POSITIVE / NEGATIVE], HIV [POSITIVE / NEGATIVE] Other medical conditions: [FOR EXAMPLE, DIABETES, HEART DISEASE] Allergies: [ALLERGIES, OR "NONE KNOWN"] Mobility, language or other needs: [DETAILS, OR "NONE"] WHAT MY UNIT WILL SEND As soon as you confirm, my home unit will send my full dialysis prescription (dialyser type, dialysate composition, anticoagulation protocol, dry weight and access type), my recent blood results, my virology results, my current medication list, and a clinical summary. MY QUESTIONS 1. Are you able to accept a visiting haemodialysis patient on these dates, and at which site? 2. What is your booking lead time, and do you have capacity in the month I want to travel? 3. What is the cost per session for a visiting patient, in what currency, and how is it paid? 4. What documents do you need from my home unit, in what format, and by when? 5. Can you confirm in writing that you conduct routine virus surveillance and that you segregate patients who are positive for blood-borne viruses? My home unit needs this confirmation in writing for my records. 6. What are your session times and shift patterns, and can you match my usual schedule? 7. What are your emergency and out-of-hours arrangements, and is there nephrologist cover? 8. What happens if I need an unscheduled extra session, or if I need to be admitted? 9. How do visiting patients usually travel between their accommodation and your unit? 10. Is there anything else you need from me at this stage? Thank you very much for your help. I am grateful for your time. Yours sincerely, [YOUR NAME] [DATE]
We do not send this for you, we do not book sessions, and we cannot guarantee that a unit has a chair free. Every arrangement is made directly between you, your kidney team, and the treating unit.
The ten questions to put to the unit
These are questions, not answers. We are not being evasive: every single one of these is genuinely unpublished for Seychelles, so the unit is the only source of truth. Take this list with you, and write the answers down.
- 1
Do you accept visiting or holiday haemodialysis patients at all, and at which site: Mahe, Praslin, or both?
- 2
What is your booking lead time, and do you have capacity in the month I want to travel?
- 3
What is your price per session for a visitor, in what currency, and how is it paid?
- 4
What documents do you need from my home unit, in what format, and by when?
- 5
Can you confirm in writing that you conduct routine virus surveillance and that you segregate patients who are positive for blood-borne viruses?
- 6
Can you accommodate me if I am hepatitis B positive, or hepatitis C positive?
- 7
What are your session times and shift patterns, and can you match my usual schedule?
- 8
What is your emergency and out-of-hours arrangement, and is there nephrologist cover?
- 9
What happens if I need an unscheduled extra session, or if I need to be admitted?
- 10
Which island are you on, and how do I get from my accommodation to the unit and back, three times a week?
Question 5 is the one that changes outcomes. Question 10 is the one people laugh at and then regret, because dialysis three times a week from the wrong island is not a holiday. Ask both.
One last, unglamorous truth
Dialysing away from your usual unit carries some added risk. Unfamiliar staff, unfamiliar equipment, and real variation in standards between units and countries. UK renal units publish patient information saying exactly this, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
But the point of saying it is to make you plan, not to frighten you out of going. People on dialysis travel, and they should. Do the paperwork early, ask the questions, get the answers in writing, and go.
Sources
- Foreign travel for dialysis patients (dialysis handbook) (Edinburgh Renal Unit, edren.org)
- Your complete guide to travelling abroad as a kidney patient (Kidney Care UK)
- Dialysis Away From Base (DAFB) (Kidney Care UK)
- Vacation on dialysis (DaVita)
- Clinical Practice Guideline: Management of Blood Borne Viruses within the Haemodialysis Unit (UK Kidney Association, 2019)
- Good Practice Guidelines for Renal Dialysis and Transplantation Units: dialysis away from base (UK Department of Health)
- Global Travel Club: notice periods and destination bandings (Baxter, 2023)
- Travel recommendations for patients undergoing peritoneal dialysis (Baxter)
- AMSA Renal Care (provider description of the Seychelles haemodialysis service) (AMSA Healthcare, retrieved 13 July 2026)
- Global Dialysis Perspective: Maldives (no peritoneal dialysis programme) (Kidney360, 2023)
- Living with CKD: stay safe in the heat and in the sun (Kidney Care UK)