Organ trade crackdown pays off

100 victims saved in the last 10 years, say health officials

ROME: Chinese health authorities told a Vatican trafficking conference that Beijing’s efforts to crack down on illegal “underground” organ transplants have resulted in 220 arrests and 100 victims being rescued over the past 10 years.

Dr Haibo Wang, deputy chief of China’s organ donation and transplant foundation, provided the data as part of China’s years-long effort to convince the international medical community that it no longer harvests organs from executed prisoners.

At a news conference on Wednesday, he reaffirmed that the organ harvesting practice officially stopped in 2015 and that China is now working to prevent illegal transplant activity.

Dr Haibo Wang

He pointed out that the underground trade, mostly in kidneys, was not conducted in hospitals but in remote civilian, non-medical facilities.

“This kind of underground activi- ty – they’re getting smarter, so it can be difficult to identify,” he added.

To combat the issue, Wang said the health ministry and police recently began surveillance of all transplant candidates’ contacts with potential organ brokers via their communications and on social media.

He also said China had proposed information-sharing agreements so that countries could identify whether patients on a waiting list in one nation travel to another potentially seeking an illegal transplant.

He acknowledged medical privacy and ethical concerns surrounding the proposal.

The Vatican conference was closed to the news media. Last year, at a similar conference, Wang and the head of China’s programme, Dr Huang Jiefu, engaged in a spirited debate with trafficking experts, who pressed China to allow independent inspections to ensure that China’s programme met international standards.

China has rejected independent inspections, but it has proposed a World Health Organization task force to coordinate anti-trafficking initiatives.

China’s participation in another Vatican conference was the latest evidence of increased cultural and scientific exchanges, and comes amid indications from the Vatican that an agreement is near over the thorny issue of Chinese bishop appointments.

This kind of underground activity – they’re getting smarter, so it can be difficult to identify.