Organ failure

There are about 11,000 people on dialysis in Saudi Arabia - a quarter of them receiving the treatment because they have diabetes.

Some 4000 people in the kingdom are waiting for a kidney transplant. More than 11 percent of Kuwaitis between the ages of 20 and 65 are diabetic, while the Bahraini Health Ministry estimates that a quarter of nationals have developed either type-2 or adult-onset diabetes.

Elsewhere across the Gulf the situation is similarly grave. Diabetes affects 246 million people worldwide and is expected to affect 380 million people by 2025. In the UAE alone, the disease will cost as much as $2.6bn to treat over the next 12 years according to estimates from the National Insurance Company.

The prevalence of diabetes in the Gulf states is among the highest in the world, yet there is an acute shortage of kidneys available for transplant.

The situation has given rise to a black market trade in human organs across the region which is increasingly threatening the lives of both the donors and recipients of the transplanted kidneys.

As always, the so-called middlemen are profiting most from the illicit trade - hooking up desperate patients seeking a new kidney, with financially disadvantaged potential donors, equally desperate for the cash.

The regional black market in human organs has proliferated in the last six months, despite a declaration on organ trafficking and transplant tourism signed by 78 countries in May, which called for a worldwide ban on organ trafficking.

Countries including the Philippines, India and China - which until recently sold organs from executed prisoners to foreigners - all signed the declaration.

As a consequence, the number of potential destinations for Gulf transplant-seekers hoping to buy a kidney, is narrowing. Egypt has yet to sign up to the declaration, although it does officially forbid patients from receiving organs from unrelated donors and has also outlawed transplants between foreigners and Egyptians.

Yet as an Arabian Business investigation reveals, patients from around the Gulf are traveling to Egypt to undergo organ transplant surgery, where some doctors and clinics are willing to falsify patient records in return for cash.

In June, a private hospital in the Giza region was shut down after authorities discovered a 26-year old Egyptian man trying to sell his kidney to a 75-year old Saudi man for $2000.

Many Gulf kidney transplant patients are returning to their home countries with complications following the surgery that has been performed on them.

According to the Middle East Society for Organ Transplantation, of the 13 patients who traveled from Kuwait to Egypt this year, one has already died and several have developed secondary infections or other medical problems after they have returned home. It is a practice that must be stopped.

Gulf states have a common vested interest in tackling the spread of diabetes and the trade in human organs, which is causing misery for thousands of people and represents the biggest single financial threat to the region's increasingly strained healthcare industry.

Sean Cronin is the editor of Arabian Business English.

RELATED LINK: Cash for kidneys

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