Organ Trafficking in India
Organ trafficking is the practice of stealing or buying organs through
exploitation to be sold on a black market for profit, and transplant for the
purpose of buying and selling.
In India, in a year, there is a need for almost 2,00,00 kidneys and only 3% of the
demand is being met and out of these only 15,000 can afford for the treatment
and only 7,000 can afford for the transplant. Even if one can afford for
transplant, finding a matching donor is difficult. This supply- demand gap leads
to the illegal transplant and trade of organs and the unwillingness to donate
organs also lead to trafficking.
Around 2,000 Indians sell kidneys every year. In a lot of cases they sell their
kidneys to clear off their debts and rest of them for food and clothing.
Kidney sellers in India come from urban slums also as from drought-prone
farming districts near the cities where transplant surgeries happen.
· In the slums of the urban areas, kidney sellers are largely women.
· People sell their kidneys so as to urge out of debt, but eventually fall back to
the debt cycle.
· Most of the cash they receive by selling kidneys goes into paying off their
debts.
· the remainder of the cash is employed for marriage, medical costs, legal fees
and education of their children.
· In many cases, the husbands pack up the cash by drinking.
· most of them had no bank accounts and approached local moneylenders once
they were in need.
“Kidney zones emerge through interactions between surgical entrepreneurs,
persons facing extraordinary debt, and medical brokers. As a neighborhood
becomes known to brokers as a kidney zone, their look for new sellers
intensifies”. Thus, the choice to sell a kidney isn't simply because of a wild of
poverty, but also linked to a debt crisis also because the availability of a kidney
market.
THE TRANSPLANTATION OF HUMAN ORGANS ACT, 1994 was
introduced for the
(1) regulation of removal of organ/s for transplantation from cadaver donors, (2)
regulation of removal of organ from living donors, (3) regulation of hospitals,
