| | Welcome to Pakistan, the world's kidney bazaar
Indebted farmers sell them for about $2,500
November 13, 2006
BY SADAQAT JAN
suntimes.com
JANDALA, Pakistan -- Nassem Kausar has done it. So, she says, have her sister, six brothers, five sisters-in-law and two nephews.
Each has sold a kidney to a trade that has led Pakistan's media to dub the country a ''kidney bazaar.''
''We do this because of our poverty,'' said Kausar.
A kidney nets the donor $2,500, sometimes less than half that amount, while recipients -- some 2,000 a year -- pay $6,000 to $12,000, compared with $70,000 in neighboring China.
Critics blame an economic system that enmeshes farmers in chronic debt, forcing them to sell their kidneys, and say the trade should be banned. The government says it is taking action.
Illegal in U.S.
In the United States, donating kidneys for money is banned. But the International Society of Nephrology has suggested expanding the pool of kidney donors by legalizing payment of about $40,000 to donors.
At least 20 transplant clinics exist in Pakistan, and 10 percent of the patients are foreigners, many from the Middle East and ''one or two'' from Europe, said Bakhsh Ali, a senior official at the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation.
Donors need check-ups
The government has drafted legislation to ''regulate'' kidney transplants, monitor surgeries and ''encourage family donors,'' said Health Ministry official Athar Saeed Dil, who has helped draft the proposed law.
He declined to say if an outright ban was planned, but Mukhtar Hamid Shah, a prominent surgeon who opened a transplant center in 1979, said the government plans to outlaw donations for money by non-family members and impose seven-year prison sentences on surgeons who break the law.
The Sindh Institute's Ali said donors need constant check-ups to keep their blood pressure and sugar under control and protect the remaining kidney.
'I cannot run'
But some donors said they received no follow-up care.
''I pant. I cannot run. I cannot pick up heavy things,'' said Allah Yar, a 50-year-old farmer who has suffered poor health for seven years since selling a kidney. |
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