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Earlier this month, the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper published an investigation
alleging impoverished people from Myanmar were enticed to sell their
kidneys to wealthy patients at a flagship Apollo Hospitals
Enterprise facility in New Delhi. The
report outlined how individuals were selling their kidneys due to
financial hardships exacerbated by Myanmar’s economic and political
turmoil. Paying for organs is illegal in India and living donors must be either close relative or receive special permission. Apollo
officials in Myanmar allegedly facilitated transplants, arranging for
donors and patients to travel to India while claiming compliance with
legal procedures, it said. In
one case, a wealthy 58-year-old Burmese patient paid 8 million kyat (or
less than $4,000) for a kidney transplant that took place in India in
September 2022, the report said. Flights and documents to make the
transplant appear legal aren’t included in that price. The
report sheds light on the big business of exploiting vulnerable people:
organ trafficking generates up to $1.7 billion from around 12,000 illegal transplants each year, according to Global Financial Integrity,
a Washington-based think tank. Its continued practice raises concerns
about the efficacy of regulation and ethical oversight globally. The
hospital chain, which has received patients from across the world for
more than two decades, issued a five-page statement in response to the
Telegraph’s story. The allegations “come as a complete shock to us. Our
hospitals have in place comprehensive checks, safeguards, and systems in
place to ensure that an organ transplantation is conducted in a legal
and ethical manner,” it said. Apollo
said it would launch an internal inquiry over the claims one of its
doctors in Myanmar was involved, but said “any suggestion of our willful
complicity or implicit sanctioning of any illegal activities relating
to organ transplants is wholly denied.” Indraprastha
Medical, which manages the New Delhi hospital at the center of the
allegations, said that it started a probe into all aspects of the
transplant process and will cooperate with any government inquiry, while
denying any willful wrongdoing. Anil
Kumar, the director of the Indian government’s National Organ and
Tissue Transplant Organisation, told me that while the Telegraph’s
report seemed to be “based on hearsay,” his agency asked Delhi’s health
authorities to look into the matter. India
isn’t alone in trying to stamp out such exploitation. But, as long as
there aren’t enough legal organs to go around, odds are stacked against
global efforts. In the US alone, more than 100,000 are on a
waiting list and only three out of 1,000 Americans who pledge to
donate die in a way that permits a transplant in the US. — Chris Kay |