Applicants for Long-Term UK Visa to Get Mandatory TB Check
.jpg)
On December 31 of 2013 the UK’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs introduced a mandatory medical check for tuberculosis for some categories of applicants for the British visa, reports Rostourism with reference to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.
That means that Russian citizens who apply for a British visa with the period of stay longer than 6 months must undergo the procedure.
If you are not planning a long visit (under 6 months), then, irrespective of the number of visits your visa allows for and its dates of validity, you need not go through the procedure.
The procedure itself consists of an X-ray examination, and if its results are not enough, an additional laboratory examination will be conducted.
In case the patient is healthy, he or she gets a certificate (valid for 6 months), which should then be filed along with the visa application.
The Embassy of the United Kingdom accepts only those certificates that have been issued by a certified clinic. The list of these clinics can be found on the website of the UK Border Agency.
It has been reported earlier that the time it takes to process applications for long-term visas (for 2, 5 or 10 years) has been reduced to 15 days. Brian Redford, the regional director for the countries of Europe and the Mediterranean Basin in the UK Border Agency, once said that the UK supported the idea of issuing long-term visas to Russians, since it would lift the load from visa centers. These visas will also serve as a stimulus for taking more trips to the country, since tourists will be relieved of wasting additional time and money on filing new documents.
At the beginning of the last year the applications for long-term visas accounted for about 6-10% of the overall number of applications.
During 9 months of 2013 the UK was visited by 143,862 Russian tourists.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)