AFP
Bhalwal, June 27: When Pakistani authorities burst into a makeshift hospital in Lahore this year, doctors were caught mid-way through two illegal kidney transplants, the local donors and Omani clients still unconscious on the tables.
The doctors were allowed to finish the operation then arrested, along with their assistants and the Omanis, in a raid, Pakistani authorities say is a turning point in their battle against organ trafficking.
Pakistan has long been an international hub for the illegal kidney trade, but medical and local authorities complain they have been unable to act against the practice, frustrated by ineffective enforcement policies and what they perceive as a lack of political will to crack down.
Organ donation is legal so long as it is voluntary, given without duress or the exchange of money.
Pakistani clerics have ruled it Islamic, but a lack of awareness and the pervasive belief that it is taboo for Muslims mean there is a shortage of those willing to donate.
The limited supply, observers say, sees Pakistan’s wealthy routinely exploit its millions of poor with the help of an organ trade mafia. Kidneys can be bought so cheaply that overseas buyers are also tapped in, largely from the Gulf, Africa and the United Kingdom.
In many countries such trafficking is confined to the shadows, in Pakistan – it is brazen.
Within minutes of a reporter entering the lobby of an upmarket general hospital in the capital Islamabad, 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 Dr Suleman Ahmed, a HOTA monitoring officer.
But the April 30 raid in Lahore was the beginning of a new clampdown, suggests Jamil Ahmad Khan Mayo, a deputy director of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).
Enforcement of current laws was in the hands of provincial authorities – that thus restricted by provincial boundaries – until March of this year, when those limits were removed by the decision to assign the powerful FIA to such cases, he explains. In the Lahore case, all 16 people arrested remain behind bars as the investigation continues. They face up to a decade in prison.
“By this raid we would like to send 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.
Ahmed, a member of a government investigation commission on the kidney trade, claims this is the reason why lawmakers are unwilling to enforce penalties. FIA officials have vowed they will be indiscriminate in their bid to end organ trafficking.