Dying on a wait list? Australia has one of the lowest organ donor rates in the world - 9. He said the allocation system, which uses cross-matching and tissue typing developed 40 years ago before powerful immunosuppressive drugs were available, disadvantaged the most needy because the longer a person spent. Let's pay people some money for a new car or a house deposit and those waiting lists will be halved within about five years.
But the chairman of the Renal Transplant Advisory Committee, Scott Campbell, said trading in organs would exploit the poor and the desperate, and could put donors' and recipients lives at risk.
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Main navigation Top Stories. Asia Kidney for sale: How organs can be bought via social media in the Philippines. Bookmark Bookmark Share. Close Top Stories. Asia Kidney for sale: How organs can be bought via social media in the Philippines In the second of a two part series looking at the illegal trade in human organs in the Philippines, CNA's Pichayada Promchertchoo investigated how social media is an essential tool for many of those involved in the lucrative business.
Pichayada Promchertchoo. He hoped it would bring him cash in no time: I am selling one of my kidneys, contact me. I am serious No fake transaction please… Carlos was one of 14 Facebook users on that particular thread who advertised their kidneys for sale. Carlos decided to sell one of his kidneys in September because he could not find enough money to pay a hospital bill.
Photo: Pichayada Promchertchoo. A year-old Facebook user posted a message on Sep 21, , on a page called Kidney Donor Philippines, offering to sell her kidney.
A Facebook user posted on a page called Kidney Donor Philippines to search for kidney donors. The page has been removed by Facebook after the company was notified of its content. A conversation thread on a Facebook page shows several users have used the platform to search for non-related kidney donors.
Our gift aid form can be found here. How to Give a Kidney. Latest News. Tomans and it will be paid by the recipient. A couple of days later, I sent another message to the broker. Me : In which hospital am I going to get the surgery? Most kidney transplant surgeries are done here. Besides, I know all the medical staff there and I can get everything done.
Broker : The surgery will be done by an attending physician. Me : Ok, great! Thank you! Broker : You are welcome. Broker : You just send me clear pictures of your documents.
Me : Could you please give me your account details so I could wire the money by Saturday? Broker : xxxxxxxxxxxxxx. This is a debit card number. Name of the card holder: Khashayar A. From this conversation I figured the broker Mahmoud had introduced is probably called Khashayar A. I looked up the card number he had given me through my bank application.
In Iran is is possible to search for a specific account number through you own account — probably meant to be a safety measure when you want to make sure you are transferring money to the right person. And the account actually existed in the well known Iranian Bank Melli — under the same name the broker had given me.
Besides the great difference in the amount that brokers offer, my conversation with this particular broker, who very casually and without reserve gave me a real name and a debit card number, and the name of the hospital without even trying to verify my identity first, shows how much they feel safe in their field.
According to him, selling through a broker gives the benefit of paying thousand instead of 1,2 million Tomans for the application and registration process, and thanks to the relations the brokers have with hospital managers, the patient would not have to wait more than two weeks to get the surgery.
The much higher price haggled by the broker for the seller is also symptomatic of the huge commission he is looking to receive from the clients i. Khashayar A. Labbafinejad Hospital in Tehran is one of the most prestigious hospitals for kidney transplants.
According to the latest statistics, as of May more than 5. Telling Sarah that her surgery will take place at this hospital could have been a mere strategy to gain her trust. After a few hours I got another private message on Instagram from another ID, Parixs, who introduced himself as Karim. He had also included lots of details about the surgery. Karim : Hi. Do you want to sell a kidney? Advertising it is not the way to go. I sold mine through a broker a few months ago.
This is his phone number. Tell him you got his number from Karim. All you need is a consent form signed by your father, and a blood type card. They have people who can do that.
The document Karim had sent me was apparently a drug test, probably belonging to a would-be seller. Whether it actually belonged to Karim or to another person cannot be determined. Me : Hi. The consent form, you mean? Karim sent me another picture of an envelope containing test results which did not include any significant information and continued:. Karim : Tell them your father lives abroad. Pay them You pay He then sent me a picture including the requirements for kidney donors.
It said that kidney donors must:. Besides middlemen and brokers, I also got some messages from people who seemed to be kidney patients in need of a transplant. A woman, whom I will call Razieh, contacted me and offered me 70 million Tomans for my kidney; a price much lower than what the brokers had promised. I told her brokers can get me about million Tomans for my kidney. But as soon as you give them the kidney, they are going to give you much less than they had promised.
I was contacted by all the aforementioned persons on Instagram in less than a week. At a point I had to end my conversation with them lest they want to find out more about my identity. After the Covid pandemic broke out the brokers stopped trying to reach me. My last attempts to contact them to reveal my true identity and ask for their permission to use their names and the information they had given me were futile as many of the accounts had already been deactivated or deleted.
Discerning the great number of poverty-stricken individuals either Iranian or non-Iranian citizens who are willing to participate in illegal organ trade out of necessity is not that difficult. Another example is a website that published an article related to the topic of illicit kidney trade last year and in about a year, they have received more than requests including personal and medical details from would-be kidney and liver sellers. Some websites go so far as to publish cautionary guidelines for the donors, teaching them how to protect themselves while dealing with brokers.
Local media in Iran is also well aware of the existence and immensity of the black market dealing in kidney trade. Before it was filtered by the authorities, this application was as widely used for this purpose as Instagram is used today. In September , another article was published in Resalat Newspaper which included a long interview with a broker who claimed he would make a minimum of million Tomans a month. These restrictions and censorships have also affected doctors and patients struggling with this problem.
Many patients who have had a kidney transplant confirm the role brokers play in the market and the relationship they have with the CASKP.
Masoud suffered from kidney malfunction, and after going through dialysis for four years, he recently got a transplant. When his problem started, he was only 24 years old, and although according to the policies, patients under 30 should be ranked prior on the waiting list to receive an organ from a cadaver, he was forced to buy a kidney at last.
I asked him:. Me : You were young. Why did you have to wait for four years? Masoud : Because I had neither money, nor someone to pull the strings for me. They pretend they want to help the patients but the reality is totally different. Masoud : Brokers and bribery. Let me tell you how it works. So do those who want to volunteer to donate a kidney.
Of course, donors receive about 30 million Tomans, so donating does not exactly mean you do it for free. Everything is fine up to this point and there seems to be no problem. But the problem is, the managers at CASKP respect the waiting list only partially while they sell most places on the list. Masoud : Exactly. Me : You mean even after 4 years, and despite the fact that you were under 30, you still did not receive a transplant from a cadaver and you had to pay for a kidney?
Masoud : Yes. I was just lucky, because I found someone inside CASKP who helped me find a kidney for a reasonable price and get my surgery in due time. He has witnessed how the brokers managed to get a transplant for a patient who was not an Iranian citizen he was an employee at a foreign embassy.
This ruling is not free from racist qualities and it has been executed at least about citizens of Afghanistan who live in Iran. Nevertheless, this law has not eliminated transplant tourism.
There have been cases where foreign patients have entered the country as a tourist and again, thanks to brokers and large sums of money changing hands, managed to get fake documents and receive an organ without having to wait their turn on the waiting list. I will call another patient I talked to, Shaghayegh. When I called her, she answered with a shaky voice. Shaghayegh : At first, yes. Me : What would you have done if he was not a match? Shaghayegh : We would have found a way. The Association would have found a way to help me.
Me : Do you know anything about the mafia of kidney trade? I mostly keep to myself. Me : This is not a conversation about politics. Shaghayegh : I do, I mean most of the times I worry what would happen if my body rejects this kidney, because that could happen, you know? It takes years to receive a kidney through CASKP, so we would have to go to the brokers and that costs a fortune.
Thank God they take good care of patients. The broad definition of what constitutes a crime in Iran means that the authorities could turn anything into a political issue and a crime against national security. Shaghayegh, besides worrying about the phone call, was worried about her body rejecting the kidney she had received in which case she would have to go to the brokers. Of all the physicians I called, none agreed to their names or their workplace being revealed, in view of security concerns.
Go find someone else to talk to! Another physician, whom I call Samaneh, refrained from answering any of my calls. So I had to email my questions to the person who had introduced her. This way she could answer the questions in person and not over the phone.
Important authorities are involved in the organ trade mafia.
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