WORLD> Middle East
Couple scarred in Egytian illegal organ trade
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-03-18 10:36

There now appears to be consensus on allowing deceased donations, but there remains a strong debate over whether the law should let doctors use brain death in determining whether a potential donor has died, as most other nations with transplant laws allow.

The brain death standard, rather than heart and lung failure, makes more organs available and is necessary for heart and full liver transplants.

Grand Sheik Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi of Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam's pre-eminent institution, last week endorsed a brain death standard. But a powerful group of lawmakers opposes it, saying it opens the door to abuses by doctors.

In the absence of a law, the organ trade has been out in the open.

Egyptians Abdel-Rahman Abdel-Aziz and his wife, Asmaa, who each sold a kidney for US$2,300 each, lie at their home in the sprawling Muqattam district on Cairo's outskirts on March 8, 2009. Egypt is one of half a dozen countries identified by the World Health Organization as organ trafficking hot spots, prompting a draft law backed by Egyptian health officials which is expected to be put before parliament in the next few months to regulate transplants. [Agencies]

Many of those looking for kidneys are Saudis paying around $16,000 for a black market transplant, experts say. The donors are plucked from Egypt's poor, often misled about the risks and abandoned after surgery with no follow-up care, said Amr Mostafa, a field researcher for the Coalition for Organ-Failure Solutions, a Washington-based advocacy group that helps donors.

In Cairo's sprawling Muqattam district, Abdel-Aziz and his wife's story began, like most others, with money troubles: He lost his job as a minibus driver and was three months behind on rent.

He was led to a neighborhood woman who worked as an organ broker.

"She said her own son did it (sold a kidney), that it was safe and that I'd get lots of money," he said. She was so persuasive that Abdel-Aziz's wife, Asmaa, agreed to sell a kidney as well.

They were promised $5,400 each. But after surgery, they were stuffed heavily sedated into taxis with just $2,300 each tucked into their clothing.

The money went fast, much of it for debts and medicine. Abdel-Aziz and his wife's health suffered from a lack of post-surgery care. They complain of weakness and pain in their sides.

As destitute as before, the couple moved in with Abdel-Aziz's 70-year-old father, Mohammed, who struggles to earn enough money as a driver to care for them.

"I'm paying for my son's mistake," said the father.

In Egypt, transplant numbers are hard to come by, as there is no official registry. At least 500 doctors union-approved kidney transplants are carried out each year.

The desperate search for organs has intensified around the world, with kidneys in highest demand due to increases in kidney disease. The 66,000 kidney transplants worldwide in 2005 met only 10 percent of the estimated need, according to WHO. The extent of illegal kidney transplants is unknown even to WHO.

Organ trade is also big business, another reason for resistance to change.

"To some extent, and this is not just specific to Egypt, there are vested interests, there is money to be made," said Dr. Gabriel Danovitch, a transplant specialist at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine who has been part of efforts to stop the problem.

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