RAWALPINDI, May 14: Kidney transplantation has become largely commercialized here due to an absence of legal safeguards, poverty and illiteracy.

Sources told Dawn that the trade had assumed an international dimension because of a ban on commercialized organ transplants in the neighbouring countries. The people come all the way from Middle East for a kidney transplant here.

The volume of this trade has been increasing exponentially in Pakistan ever since India’s imposition of a ban on organ-selling. More and more people are coming to Pakistan for the purpose. Rawalpindi being close to the federal capital has attained a special significance in this regard.

Investigations revealed that there were at least five groups of racketeers controlling the business in Rawalpindi whereas a couple was involved in such practices in the federal capital. In Rawalpindi the private hospitals where such operations are more commonly performed are located along the Jhelum Road, in close vicinity of the Fatima Jinnah University, Mohanpura and Sadiqabad. Various surgeons have formed whole teams comprising junior doctors and paramedics to conduct the operation and share the fees.

A urologist involved in the business claimed that foreign clients were contacted through some of the embassies based in Islamabad whereas local patients were referred by doctors who were paid a commission for this purpose. Foreign patients pay around $15,000 a case, he added.

The donations are arranged by a middlemen who also settles all terms with the donors regarding the payment, he said and added, the transaction was given a legal touch through an affidavit in which the donor stated that he had parted with his kidney voluntarily.

The donors mostly belong to the poor working class, who feel that selling a kidney is an easy way to keep themselves financially afloat. They are usually unaware of the implications of losing this vital organ which greatly affects a body’s metabolism, the doctors disclosed.

The donors are mostly paid something around Rs50,000 for a kidney.

More recently, there has been an increasing trend among the brick-kiln workers to “donate” their kidneys. Even these people’s employers have a share in the earnings.

The law enforcement agencies concerned are also paid “monthly” by the hospitals in return for the assurance that they would not face “unnecessary problems”, the urologist alleged.

A couple of weeks ago, a man reported to the Civil Lines Police Station that he had sold his kidney to meet the expenses incurred on the marriage of a relative’s daughter but was cheated and discharged from the hospital without being paid the promised amount.

The father-of-four was a daily-wage labourer. The police registered a fraud case against the accused doctor, his personal assistant and a middleman.