KARACHI, Sept 5: Senior doctors at the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT) said that the newly-promulgated Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Ordinance, 2007, would help reduce the exploitation of the poor.

Pleased medics said that the dedicated support of the civil society, the judiciary and the media had enabled the medical profession to win the nearly 15-year long battle through an ordinance that addressed many of their concerns.

At a meeting with media representatives arranged on Wednesday to mark the occasion, the SIUT director Prof S. Adibul Hassan Rizvi stated that the ‘organ business’ had brought great disgrace to the medical profession in the country. “We have been raising the issue for a long time,” he said, “and I am now hopeful that this ordinance will significantly reduce the exploitation of the poor, bring an end to organ trade and ensure an era of ethical living organ and cadaver organ donation in the country.”

Also the president elect of the Transplantation Society of Pakistan (TSP), Prof Rizvi called for joint efforts to ensure the true implementation of the legal provisions. “With the implementation of this law, at least 1,500 poor people will be spared the misery of selling their organs,” he said. “Whole families have sold their kidneys yet continue to live in miserable conditions, many of which are indebted to landlords are live the lives of virtual slaves.”

Meanwhile, pointed out Prof Rizvi, the ordinance paves the way to grant relief to patients suffering heart, liver, pancreatic, intestinal or lung failure since organs can be gained for transplantation purposes from cadavers. “Once fully functional, cadaver organ transplantation can save about 50,000 lives a year in Pakistan,” he remarked.

Highlighting some of the salient features of the newly promulgated ordinance, Prof Anwar Naqvi, the general secretary of the TSP, said that kidney transplants could now be motivated by sincerity rather than duress. Making particular reference to the provision concerning donations by a close, non-blood relative, he said that after satisfying an Evaluation Committee, such donations could be made on a voluntary basis if a blood-relative donor was not available. Furthermore, he said, any person over the age of 18 could authorise the donation of any of his organs or tissues for transplantation by composing a signed and verified document which would give the relevant authority to a medical institution or a hospital approved by the ordinance’s Monitoring Authority.

Prof Naqvi said that the federal government may appoint as many evaluation committees as is deemed necessary, and will soon install a monitoring authority to inspect medical institutions performing organ transplantations and then publish a list of the recognised institutions. The list may be updated from time to time, he added.

Offering the opinion that the ordinance discourages transplant tourism and provides for punishment and the imposition of fines on violators, Prof Naqvi added that a significant provision in the ordinance is the establishment of a fund for transplantations for indigent patients.