Organ trade rampant on the Internet

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Organ trade rampant on the Internet

Thursday, December 25, 2008

By Macon Ramos Araneta

The sale of kidneys from Filipino donors is now being done online as buyers and sellers go around the prohibition on the trading of human organs.

Medical experts said that well-entrenched syndicates have even managed to conduct the organ transplant in hospitals accredited by the Health Department.

Health Secretary Francisco Duque III imposed the ban on the sale of human organs last year, but the illegal trade continues to flourish with the help of online advertising, sources said.

Dr. Alberto Chua of the University of the East Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Medical Hospital said most of the organ sellers (donors) come from depressed areas such as Baseco (Tondo), Caloocan, Novaliches, Montalban (Rizal), Carmona (Cavite), Quezon, Camarines Norte, Masbate, Samar, Surigao, Agusan, Zamboanga, Davao and North Cotabato.

At least 51 percent of 536 total kidney recipients last year were foreigners, Chua said.

While the ban imposed by Duque has resulted in a 50-percent drop in kidney transplants this year, Chua said that there is still much to be done if the illegal trade has to stop.

Dr. Benita Padilla of the National Kidney and Transplant Institute called for an intensified campaign to curb the rampant sale of human organs in the country.

Online advertising of kidneys and other organs should be prohibited, Padilla said.

Records from the Philippine Renal Disease Registry showed that in 2006, 63 percent of the 690 kidney transplant operations in the country involved foreigners, and only 5 percent came from deceased donors.

Kidney transplants involving living donors markedly outnumbered transplants from deceased donors and that among the living donors, there is an increasing number of non-related donors. These all indicate that the illegal trade is booming despite the ban, the experts said.

Duque earlier cited that in the past few years, there has been a reported increase in the number of kidney transplants done on foreign patients with kidneys coming from Filipino living non-related donors, most of them from poor communities or 62-percent increase from 2002 to 2006.

The 10-percent limit on foreign transplants has been exceeded in both in accredited and non-accredited hospitals.

The Health chief said the total ban on foreign transplants is in consonance with President Arroyo’s directive which comes at a time when the Philippine government has to stop the illegal trading of internal organs.

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