Doing good — after death - Pakistan
Dawn | Hajrah Mumtaz
OFTEN, while reflecting upon the world, one comes to the conclusion that many problems would be relatively easy to fix if only people would be more flexible about changing their minds.
An issue that has been weighing on my mind is of organ donation, admittedly since someone I know was diagnosed with a kidney condition that could in the future require a transplant.
Since at least the late 1990s, it was known that patients could buy organs in Pakistan, particularly kidneys. The story broke in the print media over a decade ago when a journalist documented the suffering of the people of a village not too far from Lahore â€" most of the adult population were missing a kidney, forced by economic need to sell it for a fraction of the price paid by the person in need of a transplant.
By now, the illegal kidney trade that turned Pakistan into the cheapest ‘organ bazaar’ in the world during the decade past (an estimated 1,500 transplants per year for foreigners, at the cost of $20,000 to $30,000) is well-known.
As a result of untiring efforts by a number of people, including senior doctors, journalists, rights activists etc, we have a law that criminalises the sale of organs and codifies donations. There have been many hurdles in the way, put there mainly by commercial transplant centres that seek to fatten their coffers through continuing with their ethically indefensible trade. But as of late 2010, when President Asif Ali Zardari signed it, the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissue Act 2010 is part of the country’s legislative body.
Read more
{Register to be an organ,eye and tissue donor. To learn how, www.donatelife.net or www.organdonor.gov}
OFTEN, while reflecting upon the world, one comes to the conclusion that many problems would be relatively easy to fix if only people would be more flexible about changing their minds.
An issue that has been weighing on my mind is of organ donation, admittedly since someone I know was diagnosed with a kidney condition that could in the future require a transplant.
Since at least the late 1990s, it was known that patients could buy organs in Pakistan, particularly kidneys. The story broke in the print media over a decade ago when a journalist documented the suffering of the people of a village not too far from Lahore â€" most of the adult population were missing a kidney, forced by economic need to sell it for a fraction of the price paid by the person in need of a transplant.
By now, the illegal kidney trade that turned Pakistan into the cheapest ‘organ bazaar’ in the world during the decade past (an estimated 1,500 transplants per year for foreigners, at the cost of $20,000 to $30,000) is well-known.
As a result of untiring efforts by a number of people, including senior doctors, journalists, rights activists etc, we have a law that criminalises the sale of organs and codifies donations. There have been many hurdles in the way, put there mainly by commercial transplant centres that seek to fatten their coffers through continuing with their ethically indefensible trade. But as of late 2010, when President Asif Ali Zardari signed it, the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissue Act 2010 is part of the country’s legislative body.
Read more
{Register to be an organ,eye and tissue donor. To learn how, www.donatelife.net or www.organdonor.gov}
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