Lankan private hospital says won’t charge VAT from dialysis bills

Amidst rising cost in healthcare and essentials due to recent tax policies that came into effect, Dr. Neville Fernando Teaching Hospital (NFTH) as a part of its corporate social responsibility initiative has decided not to charge value added tax (VAT) from patients’ dialysis bills. N F T H C h a i r m a n and founder Dr.Neville Fernando said that his hospital decided to offer the benefit of ‘no VAT’ for patients’ dialysis bills and instead the VAT amount will be borne by the hospital.

Dialysis is the artificial process of eliminating waste (diffusion) and unwanted water (ultrafiltration) from the blood. Human kidneys do this naturally. Dialysis may be used for patients who have become ill and have acute kidney failure which means the temporary loss of kidney function, or for fairly stable patients who have permanently lost kidney function. Many patients with chronic kidney diseases or diabetes have to undergo the dialysis process for several times upon medical treatment recommendations. Chronic kidney disease (CKD) has become a major health problem in rural Sri Lanka. Previously confined to North Central and Uva Provinces, it is now prevalent in the Northwestern, Eastern, Southern and Central provinces, and parts of the Northern provinces.