Nairobi, June 29 -- Kidney patients will start paying less for dialysis treatment after the government removed a 16 percent value-added tax (VAT) on dialysers-the filters used to clean blood during haemodialysis sessions.

The Finance Act 2026, signed into law by President William Ruto last week, exempts dialysers from VAT with effect from July 1, offering some relief to the thousands of patients for whom the cost of staying alive has risen sharply over the past three years.

Dialysers are single-use filtration devices that are inserted into a dialysis machine at each session to remove waste products, excess fluid and toxins from the blood of patients whose kidneys can no longer perform this function. They cannot be reused, so a new one i...