| Verified against primary record | |
| Named visa category | India issues an e-Medical Attendant Visa, codes e-M2 V and e-M4 V[1] |
|---|---|
| Numerical limit | Only two attendant visas are granted against one patient visa[1] |
| Who may accompany | A close relative, family member or a friend of the patient[2] |
| Records read | Government visa portal and consular page, 30 September 2026 |
| Independently reported | |
| Counted in statistics | Unresolved; the trade definition does not say whether companion spending is included[3] |
| Bands apply only to the rows beneath them. Limits differ by country and by instrument and are not comparable. No provider-supplied figures are used. | |
Companions in medical travel are the people who accompany a patient abroad for treatment: a spouse, a parent, an adult child, sometimes a friend. The role is widely assumed and rarely defined. It is, however, formally recognised in immigration law by at least one major destination country, which makes it one of the few aspects of medical travel with a hard legal boundary around it.
A named legal category
India’s electronic visa system issues an e-Medical Attendant Visa under the codes e-M2 V and e-M4 V, alongside the corresponding patient categories e-M1 V and e-M3 V. The portal states that only two e-Medical Attendant Visas will be granted against one e-Medical Visa. Both patient and attendant visas are valid for one year from the date of arrival with multiple entries, and the application requires a letter from the Indian hospital concerned on its letterhead, including the date or tentative date of the suggested admission.[1]
The parallel paper visa stream carries the same limit and a broader definition of who qualifies. A consular page states that a maximum of two attendants are permitted with a patient, that the visa may be given to a close relative or family member or a friend of the patient, and that registration is required within 14 days of arrival where the visa is valid for more than 180 days.[2] That the category is not strictly kinship-based is worth noting, because companion arrangements are often assumed to track family relationships.
Other destination countries handle the matter differently. Malaysia’s promotion council states that only one companion is allowed to accompany a healthcare traveller, rising to a maximum of two for travellers below 12 years old, that the companion must be an immediate family member, and that proof of relationship must be submitted, while deferring the visa question itself to nationality.[4] That is an entry and hospital rule rather than a named visa category, it sits on a page that also imposes a fourteen-day isolation requirement dating from the pandemic period, and it should not be read as a national figure comparable to the Indian one. Thailand’s consular guidance on travel for medical treatment names a medical treatment visa category but says nothing about accompanying persons at all.[5]
Whether companions are counted
Medical travel revenue figures are often said to include companion spending, which would matter a great deal to their interpretation. The question turns out to be unresolved in the official definition. A United States trade briefing describes health travel services as measured through foreign nationals’ purchases of goods and services, such as food, lodging and medical care while travelling abroad, with treatment of an American abroad counted as an import and treatment of a foreign national in the United States counted as an export. On that basis it reports 2013 exports of 3.3 billion dollars, up from 1.6 billion in 2003, and imports of 1.4 billion dollars, up from 168 million in 2003. It also cites a range of 150,000 to 320,000 United States travellers annually giving healthcare as a reason for travel, with no reference year for that range.[3]
Nothing in that definition states whether an accompanying person’s spending falls inside the boundary or outside it. The honest position is that this is an open question rather than a settled inclusion, and the figures themselves are more than a decade old.
An absence of guidance
No published guidance was found on what a companion is responsible for. The most obvious place to look, a national public health agency’s travel health chapter on medical tourism, contains no guidance on travel companions at all: not on whether to travel with one, not on the companion’s role in consent, not on aftercare, and not on accommodation.[6] In practice the role is arranged between the patient, the hospital’s international patient department and whichever agency booked the trip, without any external standard governing it.
The literature on caregiver burden concerns long-term family care at home rather than accompanying someone abroad for a procedure, and its findings should not be transferred to this setting.
See also
- Medical travel coordination, where companion arrangements are made in practice
- International patient departments, the hospital units that host companions
- Medical travel for children, where a companion is required by definition
- Medical travel and cultural familiarity, where family presence is part of the expectation of care
References
- Government of India, Bureau of Immigration. e-Visa portal. Verified against primary record: government visa portal opened and read. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
- Embassy of India, Athens. Medical and Medical Attendant Visa. Verified against primary record: official diplomatic mission page opened and read. This page restates national policy for the paper visa stream rather than being that policy. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
- Chambers A, Office of Industries, United States International Trade Commission. Executive Briefing on Trade: health-related travel. August 2015, data year 2013, figures sourced to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Verified against primary record: government publication opened and read. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
- Malaysia Healthcare Travel Council. Frequently Asked Questions. Provider-supplied: statement by the promotion body; the page carries pandemic-era conditions and no date. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
- Royal Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Medical Treatment Purpose of Travel. Consular handout, no publication date stated. Verified against primary record: official consular document opened and read; it is a single-post handout rather than a global statement. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
- Stoney RJ, Leidel L. Medical Tourism, in CDC Yellow Book 2026: Health Information for International Travel. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Verified against primary record: institutional guidance chapter opened and read, and found to contain no companion guidance. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
Sourcing note: the Indian government visa portal, the consular pages and the trade briefing were opened and read on 30 September 2026. The Indian and Malaysian companion limits are presented separately rather than as a range, because they come from different jurisdictions and different kinds of instrument and are not comparable. The visa code sometimes quoted for this category in secondary writing does not appear anywhere on the issuing government’s portal and is not used here. Whether companion spending falls inside official health travel trade figures is left open, because the definition does not say.