April 10, 2008	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 3, 1429

KARACHI, April 9: The Karachi Bioethics Group has taken serious notice of the media reports which indicate that private hospitals in Lahore and Rawalpindi have resumed their unethical practice of transplantation buying kidneys from indigent citizens of Pakistan.

Expressing concern at the recent reports of flagrant violations of Human Organs and Tissues Transplantation Ordinance, the bioethics group in its meeting held the other day urged the ministry of health and the federally-appointed Human Organ Transplantation Authority’s Monitoring Authority to take strict action against the violators.

The meeting took notice of an email recently received from a transplant surgeon in Kuwait, which was also sent to the WHO and the International Transplant Society, among others.

The email provides details of a Kuwaiti patient furtively transplanted with a kidney, bought from a Pakistani citizen, in Lahore. It was observed that desperate patients from other countries were being told by such hospitals that they had special permission to transplant foreigners.

It was also pointed out that until recently kidney transplant packages were being advertised on the internet by private hospitals in Lahore.

The meeting observed that the ordinance was promulgated last year after decades-long struggle by health professionals, media, non-government organisations, backed by the suo motu notice of the issue taken by the Supreme Court. This law makes commercial dealings in organs a crime punishable by fines and imprisonment, and explicitly prohibits transplantation of kidneys from Pakistanis into non-citizens.

The participants of the meeting expressed hope that the ordinance would be enforced transparently without consideration of the status and connections of offenders.

The government must demonstrate its seriousness in putting an end to organ trafficking, they said.