GENEVA — The illegal trade in kidneys has become so rampant that more than one of the organs is traded every hour, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Every year, some 10,000 illegal kidney operations take place — about 75 percent of the black market of all organs traded worldwide — the Guardian reported Sunday, citing Dr. Luc Noel, a WHO official who monitors trends in human organ transplants.
The increasing number of people suffering from diseases such as heart problems, diabetes and high blood pressure is pushing the rise in the illicit trade of kidneys.
“There is a growing need for transplants and big profits to be made. It’s ever growing, it’s a constant struggle. The stakes are so big, the profit that can be made so huge, that the temptation is out there,” Noel said.
According to the WHO, organ brokers prey on the poor and vulnerable, paying them about US$5,000 for their kidneys.
“Donate a kidney, buy the new iPad!” a broker in China advertised, offering $3,920 per kidney.
The organ can later sell for several times the original sale price, with wealthy patients traveling to China, India or Pakistan for a $200,000 transplant.
The practice is not confined to third world countries. Last week a doctor, along with nine other people, was arrested by Israeli police on suspicion of belonging to an international trafficking ring.
“The people who gain are the rich transplant patients who can afford to buy a kidney, the doctors and hospital administrators, and the middlemen, the traffickers. It’s absolutely wrong, morally wrong,” Jim Feehally, a professor at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS trust, said.
In 2010, out of 106,879 solid organs transplanted in 95 countries, about 73,179 — or 68.5 percent — were kidneys, WHO data reveal.
The WHO noted that the 106,879 transplants, which included legal and illegal surgeries, only fulfilled 10 percent of worldwide need. The number did not factor in transplants that the organization did not know about.