Evil trade fuelled by a donor crisis

MEXICO has a booming illegal organ trafficking trade with drug cartels moving into the market.

A member of the Knights Templar cartel was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping and murdering children to harvest their organs for sale in 2014.

And police believe 14 women in the border city of Ciudad Juarez were murdered for their organs in 2003.

But Professor David Shirk, from the University of San Diego in the US, who has investigated Mexican organ trafficking, believes the main culprits are corrupt doctors.

He said: “I have no doubt organs are being removed from bodies.

“But for the most part, organ trafficking occurs in hospitals where there are corrupt medical practitioners.”

Mexicans are reluctant for their organs to be donated for transplants for religious reasons.

Waiting

Last year only 4.5 Mexicans per million made donations, compared to 47 per million in Spain, the leading donor country in the world.

More than 21,000 patients in Mexico are on a waiting list for an organ transplant.

Almost two-thirds of those are desperately waiting for a donated kidney.

The country’s politicians have this year debated moving to an opt-out organ donation system.

This would mean the organs of a dead person would be donated automatically, unless they had previously signed paperwork to say this was definitely against their wishes.

But many Mexicans are unsure whether or not the Catholic church approves.

Desperate families of gravely ill patients often resort to sourcing their own on the black market.

The National Transplant Centre says three-quarters of families will refuse to let the organs of their next of kin be donated, fuelling the shortage.

In August a 21-year-old law student and his 43-year-old uncle were beaten to death by a mob in the small central Mexican town of Acatlan after false rumours were posted on the messaging service Whatsapp that the pair were involved in child abduction and organ harvesting.