‘Online Underworld’ Of Illegal Organ Selling

By Mehvish Kidwai:

World Health Organization is warning of an alarming rise in the illegal trade in human organs, saying around 10 per cent of transplant procedures involve organs that have been bought on the black market.

The latest estimates suggest that organ traffickers are exploiting poor people in China, India and Pakistan to cash in on the rising international demand for replacement kidneys.

As per the Indian law, selling organ is ban in India. One in the blood relation can donate organ to the patient. This increases the demand for the donor. In this social networking site plays a major role, as many of the communities and people are illegally selling their kidney, lungs, liver and heart on social sites like Facebook. These people provide transplant package for the people especially from India which includes the donor, accommodation and transplant.

The beauty of kidney donation compared to other organs is that people are born with two of them, making possible donation from a living person. Other organs, like hearts, can only be donated from recently-deceased individuals. But, the fact that people can live a normal life with one kidney has helped the black market kidney trade flourish.

“Hi I can provide a donor for you whenever you want. We do minimum four transplantation a week in Sri Lanka, which takes 25 to 30 days. We have packages for the patients especially from India which includes everything like donor and accommodation, transport and dialysis for patient for those days. So, if u want only donor, I can provide you at 24/7 or if u want to go for transplantation we can go ahead. If you are interested please send me your number, so that we can talk rest on phone, said Jay, running a community named Kidney Disease Awareness on facebook for illegal transplantation”.

More than 100 transplant, a month take place in countries like Sri Lanka and Singapore where the donors are transported from small pockets of India and Nepal, mainly laborers and farmers who do not have enough money to earn their living. They are forced to sell their kidney just for the amount of Rs. 5, 00,000.

According to World Health Organization, An estimated 10,000 illegal organ operations take place every year.

Purchasing a kidney from the black market offers no guarantee about the quality of the organ supplied or patient safety. In the whole procedure of the transplant patients are asked to book their package for transplant which varies from 25 to 40 lakhs depending upon the facilities patient demand.

“We have Indian donors of all the age from 23 to 50, but most of the patient prefers young donors who are fit, they believe that their kidney last for long, said another dealer on social networking site”.

Now a day’s social networking site has become the hub for black marketing of kidney where these dealers target the rich people in need of kidney and exploit them by demanding very high amount for the transplant.

Traffickers use proxies at different stages of the process. First, someone will approach the victim, another will create the donor’s fake documents and then another will escort the donor to the hospital.

Top level doctors in India and abroad are involved in this racket. The majority of the black market kidneys are transplanted in hospitals and clinics overseas, through an underground set of networks which runs through facebook and other sites.

“The business we do is legal and registered with the government abroad. The only drawback is, that we buy the kidney from the people willing to sell which is illegal in India, said Prakash, kidney supplier”.

Regulating the black market is not a good solution as by that dealers are becoming rich, living at the expense of the well-being of the poor. It is high time people should start following the rules and regulations and the government should become stricter in order to control such illegal activities. WTN