Nepal
The real number of Nepali patients in India is undercounted by design, not by accident.
Nepal and India have shared an open border since 1950. Most Nepali patients who cross it for treatment never apply for a visa, which means they never appear in a visa-based count. Every figure on this page is a floor, not a ceiling, and we are telling you that before we tell you the numbers.
Nepal and India have shared an open border since the 1950 Treaty of Peace and Friendship, letting citizens of both countries cross, live and work without a visa or passport. In practice this is not the same as needing no documents at all: Nepali citizens still carry a citizenship certificate for land crossings or a passport for air travel, and the same applies to Indian citizens travelling the other way
Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the Government of India and the Government of Nepal, 31 July 1950, Articles 6 and 7 Checked 2026-09-13.
That single treaty explains why this corridor looks different from every other country on this site. Elsewhere, a visa record is a reasonable proxy for patient volume. Here, it structurally is not.
We arrange an independent specialist opinion built around your specific diagnosis, for a fee paid by you, and we take nothing from any hospital.
Medically reviewed
Reviewed by Dr Gunjan Patel, MBBS, registered with the Gujarat Medical Council (G-65059). Reviewed for accuracy only. This page is general information, not advice about your own case, and Dr Gunjan Patel does not diagnose, prescribe or treat.
What the government count captures
A real survey, almost certainly missing most of the real number.
around 11,399
Nepali visitors were recorded using India’s health services in a 2015-16 government survey, a figure the surveying body’s own data collection method almost certainly undercounts, since the open border means most Nepali medical travellers cross without ever generating a visa record for anyone to count
That is the most rigorous government figure we found, and even the body that collected it would not claim it captures everyone. A visa-based survey cannot count a patient who never needed a visa, and an open land border carries a different kind of traffic than an airport gate does: word of mouth moves between neighbouring towns faster than it moves between countries that require paperwork to cross. None of that makes the real number knowable. It does mean a low official count is not the same claim as a low real one, and we are not going to blur the two.
The one treatment with real, specific evidence
A national concession fare scheme for cancer patients, not an anecdote.
393
cancer patients travelled to India on discounted fares under Nepal’s own national airline’s concession scheme for cancer patients specifically, in a four-month window in 2025, spending an estimated 82.53 million Nepali rupees between them. That is a real, government-linked scheme built around one specific condition, not an informal pattern
Nepal News, "For complex diseases, Nepalis look to India" Checked 2026-09-13.
A single news outlet’s figures, not independently corroborated elsewhere, and the same article also cites an industry estimate of roughly 600 Nepalis a day travelling to India for treatment overall, which we have not repeated here since it comes from one hospital chain’s own contact rather than a counted survey.
We are not going to extend that same confidence to other conditions. Cardiac, neurological and kidney cases are mentioned in coverage of this corridor, but as individual stories, not a counted scheme the way cancer travel is. If your diagnosis is one of those, tell us and we will give you a specific answer rather than borrowing confidence from a different condition’s evidence.
Who pays for the advice you get
An open border makes this route easier to reach, not easier to trust blindly.
Wherever real numbers of patients travel a route, companies form to arrange the trip. Some are paid by the hospital that receives the patient, not by the patient, which is worth knowing before you take advice from anyone.
Referral fees
can be paid to a medical travel facilitator by the hospital abroad, and a review of the research on facilitators, published in 2012, says patients may not know how much, or in what manner, a facilitator is paid
A review of earlier research, read as the authors’ manuscript. It says some facilitators are paid by their clients and others by facilities or physicians abroad, gives no proportion and no rate, and says there is little evidence on whether such payments influence recommendations. We found no readable source that gives a commission percentage, so we do not print one. The book is dated 2012 and the university repository record 2013. A consultant’s account of price padding shown elsewhere on the site is hers, attributed to her, and not a rate we have verified. Commission is one model in this market, not the only one, and we never say every company works this way.
That does not make every such company dishonest. It does mean the recommendation you receive has a financial direction built into it, and an easy border crossing does not change who is paying for the advice on the other side of it.
We are paid by you, once, and we take nothing from any hospital afterwards. This is exactly how that works, and this is how it compares to the commission model above.
Questions
What Nepali patients and families ask us.
If the border is open, do I even need to plan ahead?
Yes. An open border removes the visa step, not the medical one. You still need the right records, the right hospital for your specific diagnosis and a plan for what happens once you are home, and those are the parts a rushed, last-minute trip tends to skip.
I have heard a figure like 600 people a day travel to India from Nepal for treatment. Is that real?
We found that estimate too, from one hospital chain’s own contact, and we are not repeating it as a fact on this page because it is not a counted number, it is one company’s estimate of its own market. The honest answer is that nobody has a reliable total, for the reasons explained above.
My diagnosis is not cancer. Does the rest of this page still apply?
The open-border facts apply regardless of diagnosis. The cancer-specific evidence does not. Tell us what you are facing and we will answer for your case, not for the condition with the most public data behind it.
Why would I pay you when the border crossing itself is easy and free?
Because an easy crossing and a right decision are different things. We charge a fee specifically so our advice has no reason to favour any hospital on either side of that border, including the ones a facilitator is quietly paid by.
Who looks after me once I am back in Nepal?
A doctor there, agreed before you travel rather than found afterwards. This is why our involvement runs for ninety days after you return rather than ending at the border. How the ninety days work.
Get a specific answer before you cross the border.
Thirty minutes, free. We will tell you plainly what your case needs, before either of us spends more time on it.