Kidney trade: Sell an organ, become worse off

Despite punishment, a huge black market for illegal organ trading exists.

LAHORE: Just over a year ago Pervez Masih from Youhanabad, a Christian neighbourhood outside Lahore, had an argument with his wife. This was not caused by run-of-the-mill domestic irritation. His wife’s grievance was legitimate: she wanted to stop Pervez from selling his kidney.

“I am going to tell your parents and they will sort you out,” she said to him. His reply was to ask how else they planned to pay off their accumulated debt of Rs50,000.

In December 2010, Pervez signed up, through a friend, to sell his kidney. This is illegal in Pakistan and carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a fine of Rs1 million under the Human Organ Transplant Act 2007. Anyone found involved in underhand kidney sales, be it the seller, the recipient or the medical staff involved, is subject to these punishments.

Pervez’s sale was straightforward; it lasted 20 days. He remembers getting a call one day to visit Rawalpindi for medical tests. “I was to meet a man at an address who then took me to a big house in the city. Inside there was a proper hospital running,” he recalls.

About 10 days later, he was told to come again. A different man took him to the same ‘underground’ hospital, where he stayed for a week, during which his kidney was removed. He does not know who the recipient or the doctors were.

The fixers

Pervez was promised Rs100,000 for the organ through his friend Sohail, a kidney broker from his neighbourhood.

Sohail has been in this business since 2007, when he sold his own kidney. “I am just trying to help those who come to me with the offer to meet with interested parties. We are poor people and many of us are indebted,” he says.

In the last four years Sohail has brokered deals for at least four people. “I cannot reveal everything, but I know how to get in touch with those who are in this business.”

He does say that in some government hospitals the lower medical staff is involved in the black market organ trade. “I leave a message with the people I know at these hospitals, and they contact me in four to five days,” he says without revealing the name of the hospitals.

Crackdown against gangs

Although stories of police busts of organ trade gangs occasionally surface in the news, investigations reveal that the black market has become more underground over the past few years, with houses in different cities being used as transplant hospitals. One such house was discovered in Lahore by police in July this year.

Police say that the buyers are usually foreigners who pay a high price, sometimes up to four to five million rupees for one kidney. “We caught the medical staff, a foreigner and a kidney seller, who was unconscious on a bed,” says Amin Bokhari, head of investigations in the Cantonment area of Lahore. “The seller caught unconscious changed his story when he woke up. He says he was kidnapped and brought here, saying he has no idea about the kidney transplant,” Bokhari says, adding that many sellers do this to avoid imprisonment.

Kidney sellers worse off

The kidney broker, Sohail, lost his job a couple of months ago due to poor performance at work. Pervez is not doing well either.

“I bought land over which I built this,” he says, referring to the shanty home he lives in. “And even though I have land to live on now, I cannot work as hard as I did, after the operation.” Pervez works in construction and says that, following the operation, he gets tired too quickly.

He pleads his case but says he knows he did something illegal. “I did not want to sell my kidney. But I needed the money.”

(Read: Doctors would give an arm and a leg to end illegal organ trading)

(Sohail’s name has been changed at his request)

Published in The Express Tribune, January 2^nd,  2012.