BBC: I bought a new kidney

BBC: I bought a new kidney

13:52 GMT, Wednesday, 10 June 2009 14:52 UK

Londoner Sukhi Johal paid £30,000 for a kidney transplant operation in Pakistan.

She told BBC Radio 5 Live's Victoria Derbyshire show why she has no regrets about buying an organ from a live donor - something that is illegal in the UK.

Beautician Sukhi was diagnosed with kidney disease when she was 21.

Sukhi, now 46, says she remained relatively healthy until 2007 when her condition worsened.

She began dialysis treatment in the US, where she was based at the time, but found it hard to tolerate after 15 months.

Suffering

US doctors said that she would probably have to wait more than 10 years before a suitable donor organ became available.

"I wasn't willing to do that," she said.

"I was suffering so much I just felt like I couldn't wait 10 years for a kidney."

Sukhi was put in contact with a family friend who had a paid a donor and undergone a successful transplant in Pakistan, where the sale of an organ is not illegal, provided it is "voluntary, genuinely motivated and without duress or coercion."

She also started communicating with a hospital in Pakistan.

A suitable donor was eventually found - a 25-year-old mother of three - and while Sukhi explained that she felt "very apprehensive" about the procedure, she felt the risk was worth taking.

"I was willing to play the odds and see what happened," she said.

"At that point, I wasn't too bothered.

Poverty

"If it was successful - fantastic - I would have my life back, and if not, I was willing to take that chance."

Although she was concerned about the ethics of paying a donor, she went ahead because "it was a matter of life and death for me".

She says she feels that the decision to sell an organ is a "personal, individual choice", but acknowledges that poverty can play a big part.

"From what I know of my donor, I know she had no home, so she obviously did it because she needed the money and I obviously did it because I needed to get my life back."

Against the hospital's wishes, Sukhi met with her donor before the procedure, which was carried out in December 2008.

"Seeing her was very overwhelming for me", she says, "but I felt I was helping her in many ways.

"She had already made the decision she was going to do it, and she was on the list at the hospital, so if I hadn't chosen to take her kidney, somebody else would have done so."

Sukhi returned to the UK after the operation and feels that she now enjoys good health.

She says she had arranged an additional private payment to the donor and that she plans to fund the education of her donor's children.

"Exploited"

Sukhi told Victoria Derbyshire that she is talking about her experiences in a bid to encourage the Asian community to donate organs and carry a donor card.

People from an Asian background are three to four times more likely to need a kidney transplant than the general population.

Professor Peter Friend, the director of the Oxford Transplant Centre, told BBC Radio 5 Live that there were several reasons why paid living donor transplants were illegal in many countries, including the UK.

"There are real concerns as to the well-being of the donor, whether they're being coerced, whether they're being exploited, or whether these organs are simply being removed to the benefit - substantially - of the people who are undertaking the business - such as the transplant units, rather than the donor themselves."

Professor Friend said that the mean waiting time for a first transplant in the UK was around two years, boosted by the practise of paired exchange.

He stressed there were risks to the patient as well as the donor of having such procedures abroad.

"Every transplant unit in the UK, I would suspect, has got a small number of patients who have come back from overseas.

"In some cases it has gone well - but many may have not."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8092891.stm