BHALWAL: As authorities concerned burst into a makeshift hospital in Lahore earlier this year, doctors were caught midway through two illegal kidney transplants. The local donors and Omani clients were still lying unconscious on the tables.
The doctors were allowed to finish the operation before they were arrested, alongwith their assistants and the Omanis in a raid that took place on April 30. Authorities concerned hopethe raid will prove a turning point in their battle against organ trafficking. Pakistan has long been an international hub for illegal kidney trade, but medical experts and authorities concerned complain that they have been unable to act against the practice, frustrated by ineffective enforcement policies and what they perceive is a lack of political will.
Organ donation is legal in the country, so long as it is voluntary and undertaken without duress or exchange of money. Clerics in Pakistan have ruled the practice Islamic, but a lack of awareness and the pervasive belief that it is taboo for Muslims meansthat there remains a shortage of those willing to donate.
The limited supply, observers say, sees Pakistan’s wealthy routinely exploit its millions of poor with help of an organ trade mafia. Kidneys can be bought so cheaply that overseas buyers are also tapped in, largely from the Gulf region, African countries and the UK. In many countries, such trafficking is confined to the shadows, but in Pakistan – it is brazen.
Within minutes of an AFP reporter entering the lobby of an upmarket general hospital in Islamabad, the staff had helped him find a so-called ‘agent’ who offered to get a donor and facilitate government approval for a kidney transplant – all for a tidy $23,000.
The government’s Human Organs Transplant Authority (HOTA) says it is toothless. If a donor claims they give their consent, “there is nothing else we can do,” says DrSuleman Ahmed, a HOTA monitoring officer. But the April raid in Lahore was the beginning of a new clampdown, suggests Jamil Ahmad Khan Mayo, a deputy director of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).
Until March this year, enforcement of current laws on organ trafficking was in the hands of provincial authorities. Since then, the FIA has been mandated to undertake the task.
In the Lahore incident, all 16 arrested remain behind bars as investigation continues. They face up to a decade in prison.
“By this raid, we have sent a strong message abroad that Pakistan is no longer a safe haven for (illegal) kidney transplantation,” Ahmad says. Experts suggest there is a need to tackle the root causes of the rampant underground industry. “This illegal trade benefits the rich and elites of the country,” says Mumtaz Ahmed, head of nephrology at the government-run Benazir Bhutto hospital in Rawalpindi.
Published in Daily Times, June 29th, 2017.
