PAKISTAN: Putting a stop to kidney (nyre) sales – part of an international market for human kidneys
LAHORE, 11 November 2010 (IRIN): Rehmat Masih, 35, who lives in the predominantly Christian Youhanabad suburb of Lahore, capital of the eastern province of Punjab, is facing hard times.
On a monthly income of around Rs 6.000 (70 US dollar) which he earns by selling sweet drinks from a stall, he can barely provide food for his family of six.
To make matters worse, his wife is sick with hepatitis (leverbetændelse) and, to help meet the costs, his two oldest children, Saleem aged 13 and Sumera 11, are forced to work as garbage collectors (skraldsamlere).
High food price inflation has added to their difficulties. Consumer prices rose by 15,71 per-cent in September alone, according to official figures.
A few years ago Rehmat would have known just what to do: He would have sold a kidney to gain at least temporary respite from poverty.
But though he has approached two middlemen who arrange for hospitals to sell kidneys to wealthy clients requiring transplants, he has not yet received any guarantee he will be able to find a buyer.
Things had been quite significantly different until three years ago. Pakistan had gained a reputation as an international marketplace for kidneys, with around 4.000 kidney transplants taking place annually and only around 25 percent of the organs coming from related donors.
Around half of those receiving kidneys came in from other countries to receive an organ they had bought, usually from impoverished people in Punjab.
– Around 2.000 transplants took place each year, with about 1.500 of these involving foreign buyers who travelled to Pakistan to buy a kidney, Maj-Gen (retd) Abdul Qadir Usmani, administrator of the National Human Organ Transplantation Authority (NHOTA), told IRIN.
2007 law
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