The Telegraph | Mazur Mahmood
London, June 11: An investigation has exposed the organised criminals who secretly trade organs for British transplant patients for as little as £4,500 (Rs 3.85 lakh).
The gangs, operating in eastern Europe and the Indian subcontinent, prey on the desperation of patients requiring organs and the poverty of donors who often earn less than £1,000 (Rs 85,754) from the exploitative deals.
The so-called organ brokers have developed a network of corrupt officials who provide fake documentation to show that donors are related to the recipients, a legal requirement in Britain and several other countries. They have also recruited corrupt doctors who conduct medical tests and help arrange transplant operations in the donors’ homelands.
Police are investigating the first case of people-trafficking for organs in Britain after a woman was brought to the country last month by an eastern European gang that planned to sell her kidney.
However, the international trade in human organs has been flourishing for several years. Last month, a report by the World Health Organisation estimated that 10,000 black-market transplant operations take place each year.
The illicit trade begins with men such as Tsvetan. He and several other touts were found loitering outside a blood transfusion centre in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, as they offered poor and homeless people 20 euros (Rs 1,401) for a unit of their blood. The blood is resold for as much as 10 times that sum.
Far more lucrative, however, is the buying and selling of organs — a point not lost on Tsvetan as he listened to an undercover reporter detail how a female relative in London required a kidney.
Tsvetan asked for the woman’s blood type and on being told she was A positive replied: “We have that available. I have a man who has exactly that blood type. We have his full medical reports.… When you see that everything is right then we can talk about money and the guy will go with you to London.”
Hours later, he summoned the reporter to a cafe where he handed over a bundle including blood reports, ultrasound scans and X-rays.
Pointing to one, he said: “Look, he is A positive, everything is in order. He has no diseases — HIV, hepatitis, everything is negative. We were going to sell his kidney to another patient but the guy died before the transplant could take place.... You are lucky.”
Read more: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120611/jsp/nation/story_15595361.jsp#.T9VKc2t5mK0
{Register to be an organ,eye and tissue donor. To learn how, www.donatelife.net or www.organdonor.gov}
No comments:
Post a Comment