ONLY sustained vigilance can counter a resurgence of the extreme form of exploitation that is the organ trade. The racket is predicated on poverty so extreme that individuals will sell their body parts in return for some monetary compensation, a ‘choice’ scarcely based on true free will. Consider that most vended organs are procured from bonded labourers, aptly described as ‘modern slaves’. At the other end is the boundless greed of some medical professionals and affiliated individuals who keep the market for vended organs going, preying on the desperation of potential ‘donors’ as well as of patients yearning for health. Recent events illustrate how the criminals involved in the lucrative business find ways to elude detection through cross-border networks. On Monday, an FIA team carried out a raid at the passport office in Lahore on receiving information about an international gang of organ traffickers operating in the city. Seven people, including donors and agents, were arrested — the latter on suspicion of luring destitute people to sell their organs, with the transplants being carried out in China. According to FIA sources quoted in this paper, preliminary investigations reveal that the agents paid some 30 donors Rs400,000 each, facilitated their transfer to China, and through their contacts in that country, arranged for transplant procedures to be performed there on patients travelling from Pakistan.

The latest development is part of a pattern that can be observed since 2017 after the FIA busted several organ trafficking rings in Punjab, the province where most of the racket was once based. Pakistan was at the time seeing a spike in ‘transplant tourism’, meaning that people were visiting this country especially to get transplants done with organs purchased on the black market. Several hospitals in Lahore and one in Rawalpindi were notorious for the practice; procedures were sometimes even carried out in residential buildings. Following the FIA’s crackdown, things went quiet, until law-enforcement agencies realised that the racketeers had altered their modus operandi. While donors were still being procured from Punjab, doctors — often practising in the same province — were now travelling to KP and AJK to carry out the transplants. After those gangs were apprehended, it seems the ‘theatre of operations’ has shifted further afield to China; earlier only some patients from Pakistan would go to that country, and to India, for transplant procedures.

This year marks a decade since Pakistan’s ethical organ transplantation law was enacted in March 2010. Prior to that, the country was infamous as a market for vended organs. Although illegal transplants declined steeply after the law was passed, every time there has been lax implementation the practice has seen a comeback. In an inequitable society, the exploitation of the poor knows no limits. Those guilty of trafficking in organs must be proceeded against to the fullest extent of the law.

Published in Dawn, September 10th, 2020