Transplant Tourism

As mentioned before about the medical exploitation of the poor , another report came to my attention .

"Transplant tourism" is on the rise , especially for kidneys, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said .
The United Nations agency said it was concerned about a rise in cases where people in countries such as Pakistan, Egypt and the Philippines were persuaded to sell their body parts to outsiders, mostly through a broker.

"We believe 5 to 10 percent of all kidneys transplanted were in 2005 transplanted in this setting " said Luc Noel of the WHO's health technology and pharmaceuticals unit. Noel said many of those who sell their organs and tissues do not receive adequate follow-up medical care, increasing their health risks.

"There are villages that are in the poorer parts of Pakistan where as many as 40 to 50 percent of the population of the village we know only has one kidney" Farhat Moazam of the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation in Pakistan said . She said donors are often promised as much as 150,000 rupees (1,767 pounds) for an organ but may only get a fraction of that after brokers' fees and associated medical costs are paid.

"The wealthy, in search of their own survival, will sometimes seek organs from the poor" Jeremy Chapman, a physician at Westmead Hospital in Sydney, Australia, said

We are no longer just milch cows for the rich to exploit for our labour , but now we have become their walking transplant bank .