Patients blamed in kidney scam

Patients blamed in kidney scam

`Selfish' people seeking transplants bargain down price, medical tourism agent says

Feb 05, 2008 04:30 AM
Prithi Yelaja
Staff Reporter

Desperate transplant patients, who don't really care how a donor organ overseas is procured, are just as much to blame as Amit Kumar, kingpin of an underground kidney trafficking ring busted by police in India, says a Calgary-based medical tourism operator.

Aruna Thurairajan, owner of Overseas Medical Services, gets a few calls every week from patients from as far away as Algeria needing kidney transplants.

A growing global industry, medical tourism connects patients primarily in North America with health services overseas.

"Money is a big factor for people to decide where to go. Often they want to bargain how much to pay the vendor (organ donor). Some of them can be quite selfish and mean. They think they can buy the kidney for peanuts. That's why the likes of (Kumar) can prosper. So the patient should also be blamed along with him, because the patient bargains down the price," said Thurairajan.

"It's a big racket. There's big money involved, but the vendor gets only a fraction of that."

A Brampton resident trained in Ayurvedic medicine, Kumar is wanted by Interpol for "crimes against life and health." He is on the run after police raided his clinic in Gurgaon, India, which illegally harvested kidneys from as many as 500 people, typically labourers who were duped. Kumar was allegedly charging patients wanting transplants $50,000.

Thurairajan won't send patients to India because transplants between unrelated living donors are illegal there. Kumar's case "gives medical tourism a bad rap," she says.

Wait lists of several years in North America drive the huge demand for overseas kidney transplants.

That this is a straight market transaction is highlighted by the industry lingo used: the donor is referred to as the "vendor;" the person recruiting donors is the "broker," while "agents" like Thurairajan recruit patients.

The Philippines is the only country in the world that allows living donor kidney transplants, according to Thurairajan.

The all-inclusive cost, which includes airfare, a six-week hospital stay, surgery and follow-up medical services for the donor for one year is $120,000. Of that amount, the donor gets a fee of $10,000.

Colombia also offers kidney transplants for $120,000, but only from cadavers and only after local citizens have rejected the organs, usually on the basis that they are "too old," said Thurairajan.

"Cadavers older than 35 years of age are usually up for grabs for foreigners. One just needs to hang around and within a week or two one can get an organ.

"It's a very lucrative market. In many pockets of India it has been going on for a long time. There are stories that in the fishing villages of south India almost everybody has sold a kidney."

Some medical tourism operators, like Vancouver-based Timely Medical Alternatives, won't arrange transplants because of ethical concerns, said company president Rick Baker.

http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/300437