ISLAMABAD: A man has asked the Supreme Court to allow his father, who is suffering from acute renal failure and who is on dialysis, to have a kidney transplant at a hospital in Rawalpindi.

According to petitioner Shehzad Sadiq, the hospital in Rawalpindi is reluctant to perform the surgery due to an organ transplant case pending in the SC.

The SC is hearing a case initiated on May 10 this year after a letter was written by one Dr Adibul Hasan Rizvi, in which he had invited the chief justice’s attention towards the bad reputation that illegal organ transplants were earning for the country. The letter also included details of emails sent by Dr Francis Delmonico, the executive director of the Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group (DICG), which is an international body that works under the WHO for protecting the poor and vulnerable from transplant tourism.

On September 29, Justice Masud Abid Naqvi of the Multan Bench of the Lahore High Court had disposed of Mr Sadiq’s petition when told that the SC was hearing a case regarding illegal organ transplants after taking suo motu notice of the matter.

In its order, the high court had said that the petitioner may approach SC with his grievance.

Through his counsel Advocate Siddique Khan Baloch, the petitioner said that his 56-year-old father Sadiq Hussein, a resident of Dera Ghazi Khan, needed an organ transplant surgery, for which a donor has also been found. The donor is the daughter-in-law of the petitioner’s uncle, who is not related to the patient by blood and is willingly donating her kidney.

Talking to Dawn, Advocate Baloch said that his client had gone to the Bilal Hospital in Rawalpindi for the operation only to be told that the hospital will only conduct the operation if the Punjab Human Organ Transplant Authority (Phota) at the King Edward Medical University in Lahore grants permission, in view of the case pending in the apex court.

According to section 3 of Phota, a living donor of age 18 and above can voluntarily donate an organ, though the donor has to be legally related to the patient and also has to be a blood relative.

Therefore, the hospital administration had written to Phota on September 22 in order to seek permission for the transplant. The letter said that Sadiq Hussein was diagnosed with end stage renal failure and that he needed urgent transplant surgery, with the donor not being a close blood relative. The letter also said that the donor seemed to be willingly donating the kidney without any duress or coercion.

In his petition before the Supreme Court, Shehzad Sadiq has pleaded to be allowed to become a party in the pending suo motu case and to allow his father the surgery by hearing the case as soon as possible. The petition says that the donor is a match and has consented to the donation willingly.

The donor has also submitted an affidavit in which she has consented before the doctor concerned.

The three-judge SC bench headed by Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali on Monday took up Mr Sadiq’s application but remanded the case back to the Multan Bench of the Lahore High Court for deciding on the case on merit.

Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2016