EDITORIAL: It’s been more than two decades since a law was enacted in compliance with the World Health Organisation’s (WHO’s) guidelines to curb human organs trade, yet the prevalence of this illegal and immoral activity is scandalously high in this country.
The latest case emerged in Islamabad when the father of a young man, who died after a botched liver transplant, lodged a complaint with the relevant authorities. According to a press report, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has hunted down dozens of suspects, including their ringleader, from a clandestine clinic located on the outskirts of the capital city.
The relevant authorities’ lax attitude toward disrupting and prosecuting those involved in human organs trade has earned this country the unenviable reputation of being a major centre for illegal kidney transplants. In August of last year, the Punjab Organised Crime Unit claimed to have busted a mega kidney transplant racket being run in a DHA farmhouse by three senior doctors, one of whom was based in Dubai from where he brought patients to Pakistan charging them hefty fees for transplanting kidneys taken from poor donors for paltry sums and the promises of jobs in the Gulf state.
It is worth noting that, as reported, when the police raided the DHA ‘farmhouse’ on a tip-off, they had shared that information with the Punjab Human Organ Transplant Authority, only to be ignored for some inexplicable reason.
Two months later, Lahore police nabbed eight members of another organs trading gang, including doctors and paramedics along with their leader, a notorious kidney surgeon, who allegedly ran the largest transplant operation in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, as well AJ&K.
At least three donors are reported to have died due to his kidney extractions. Somehow, he managed to escape from police custody, though the police later claimed to have arrested him. He was previously arrested five times for the same crime — which under the law is punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 10 years and a fine of up to Rs one million — but each time he walked free on bail to do the same.
Reflecting a general concern, the then caretaker chief minister Mohsin Naqvi had said, one shuddered to think of the existing facts and figures, adding that “there are a lot more transplants and illegal surgeries than the ones that we have confirmed”.
As the foregoing examples show no one is willing to pursue the rogue medical practitioners and their facilitators. The law has failed to produce the desired result because there is too much money to be had by unethical greedy doctors, middlemen and their protectors, and a large number of poor people exploitable into selling their kidneys for as little as Rs 50,000 to Rs 80,000.
A better strategy needs to be evolved to eliminate organ trading networks. In this regard, benefit can be gained from the experience of countries, which have effectively regulated safe and ethical organs transplantation.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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