#pakistan has become an international hub of organ trafficking #fact

Pakistan has become an international hub of organ trafficking and a destination for 'transplant tourism', the country's Supreme Court has been told.


A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court, seeking a direction for the government to devise protocols and rules to prevent any violation of the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissue Act, 2010.

Advocate Muneer A. Malik filed the plea on behalf of a number of petitioners, including Supreme Court Bar Association President Asma Jehangir and Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) Chairperson Zohra Yousuf.

The plea said that unscrupulous elements had led Pakistan to becoming an international organ trafficking hub and a transplant tourism destination.

The petitioners said that the modus operandi of hospitals and doctors violating the law is very sophisticated, and that commercial transplants taking place in Pakistan frequently involve foreigners.

They said that in the absence of an effective law, patients from Europe, India and the Middle East visit Pakistan and pay anywhere between 10,000 and 30,000 dollars for a transplant, which included the purchase of a kidney from a living donor.

Invariably, such commercial donors were destitute, impoverished and uneducated people who were lured by middlemen working hand in glove with unscrupulous hospitals and medical practitioners, they added.

The petition cited a survey showing that 90 per cent of 239 commercial kidney donors in Sargodha district were illiterate, 66 per cent bonded labourers and 93 per cent of them had sold kidneys to pay off their debts.

The average price paid to such donors for a kidney ranged between 50,000 and 200,000 rupees, leaving a handsome margin for the middlemen and the doctors and hospitals involved, the Dawn reports.

The petitioners pleaded the court to direct the appointment of an individual at every recognised hospital or medical institute for monitoring and ensuring strict implementation of the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissue Act, 2010.

The court has also been requested to direct the Human Organ Transplantation Authority (HOTA) to register complaints and provide information about the complaints it receives and the investigative measures it takes.