Business as usual for organ traffickers

Due to poor enforcement, this illegal trade continues to put many lives in danger.

A KUWAITI recipient, a Pakistani donor; an Israeli recipient, a Ukrainian donor; an American recipient, an Indian donor; and so on. The global dimensions of organ trafficking were exposed in shocking detail at an international summit on the subject at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at the Vatican.

Every region, encompassing more than 50 countries, was represented. Disturbing accounts emerged of organs being traded in every corner of the world, with medical professionals, police, middlemen (or agents), immigration officials, etc, all playing a role.

There are two elements that underpin this transnational racket – greed and poverty.

There is no shortage of either in the subcontinent. A woman in Karachi looking for a liver donor for her father was horrified to find that a prospective candidate had already sold one of his kidneys.

In India, a labourer was persuaded to sell a kidney by three doctors at a private hospital who told him it “was like donating blood”. He went ahead and over time, became an agent himself.

In the Bangladeshi village of Tebaria, the body of a sixyearold boy was discovered some days after his kidnapping, with both his kidneys removed.

Yet all these countries have laws against organ trafficking.

In India, the practice has been illegal since 1994; in Bangladesh since 1999, where punishment for organ trade is between three and five years’ imprisonment and a fine of around US$3,850 (RM16,000).

Pakistan’s legislative history on the issue began with an ordinance in 2007 that was legislated upon by the parliament in 2010 as the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act 2010. This law prescribes imprisonment of up to 10 years, and loss of licence for the medical personnel involved.

The problem in all these countries, where the states do not expend themselves in pro tecting the poor, is lack of implementation.

That has had a number of adverse consequences, of which the situation in Pakistan is a good illustration.

For one, pushing the racket underground has made it ever more lucrative. From US$5,000 (RM21,000) earlier, transplants now cost between US$15,000 and US$20,000 (RM64,000 and RM85,000). And that is only for locals. Those who come from outside Pakistan to buy an organ and undergo the procedure here – known as transplant tourists – can expect to pay up to US$100,000 (RM427,000).

Not realising that he was speaking to an undercover journalist, a doctor at a Rawalpindi hospital, long notorious for organ trafficking, told Dawn: “Unrelated donors become a complicated issue, there are lots of legal aspects which we have to cover. Because of all this, the cost has gone up.”

A number of creative solutions have been found to evade the law in Pakistan.

The transplants usually take place in the dead of night, in rented villas where rooms are kitted out as operation theatres.

Agents, who scour the countryside looking to lure people into selling their organs, change their mobile numbers frequently and smuggle people to the locations where their transplants are to be carried out.

At the same time, the clandestine nature of the business means that the quality of transplantation has deteriorated sharply.

Dr Mustafa alMousawi, president of the transplantation society in Kuwait, said that most Kuwaiti patients who have been transplanted in Pakistan are sent home soon after surgery, “often with catheters and drains still in place”.

Needless to say, this is extremely dangerous for transplant patients whose immune systems are deliberately suppressed to reduce the chances of the body’s natural response of rejecting the transplanted organ.

However, the treatment meted out to the socalled donors is far worse.

These are desperately poor people, many of them bonded labourers trying to pay off crushing debts that keep them in servitude for generations.

The unscrupulous individuals in the organ trade consider them no more than mere commodities.

Unbeknown to her, Halima was three months pregnant when she sold her kidney.

However, no one bothered to give the young married woman a pregnancy test; if they did discover that she was with child, they did not bother to inform her.

Also, donors are usually dispatched – by public transport – to their home village between 48 and 72 hours after their kidneys have been harvested, with no more than a few painkillers.

If their stitches become septic, or complications occur, they are on their own.

Meanwhile, the impunity with which organ traffickers operate means that those who need a transplant often opt for purchasing an organ (sometimes at the suggestion of their doctors themselves), rather than testing for a compatible donor within the family, the legally permissible route.

Organ trade also undermines efforts by advocacy groups to promote deceased organ donation, which is the way forward to ensure that more organs become available for ethical transplantation.

Objections to deceased organ donation on religious grounds are unfounded. Many Muslim countries allow the practice. There have been a number of fatwas (edicts) by religious scholars stating that the medical procedure does not violate Islamic tenets.

Despite this, there have so far been fewer than 10 instances of deceased organ donation in Pakistan, where 150,000 people every year die of endstage organ failure. In Bangladesh, there is no deceased organ donor programme as yet.

India, that sees 500,000 people dying each year while waiting for transplants, is showing some results, even though the overall rate of 0.5 donors per one million is far below that of many countries in the West.

In Pakistan, there have been of late some encouraging developments after the country’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), less prone to being compromised than the local police, acquired the mandate to take action against this crime.

On April 29, an FIA team carried out a raid on a rented house in the city of Lahore while two transplants were in progress.

The ruthless greed of the traffickers can be gauged from the fact that the doctor who was caught redhanded carrying out the operation was not even a kidney specialist; he was a plastic surgeon. The writer heads The Dawn’s investigation unit. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.