False documents aid GCC patients to buy illegal organs

ILLEGAL TRADE: GCC patients are having documents falsified in bid to undergo illegal transplants.

Patients from the GCC, forced to travel abroad because of a lack of available organs, are having documents falsified by Egyptian hospitals in a bid to cover up illegal kidney transplants, Arabian Business can reveal.

The Egyptian Ministry of Health and a number of leading nephrologists have confirmed that transplant patients from the region are returning home with false documents showing information including fake hospitals and surgeons.

“Reports are templated; there is no name of the patient, hospital, doctor or the institute…it doesn’t even mention the name of the patient, just that they had a kidney transplant; even the date has been changed,” said Dr Sadiq Abdulla, a consultant vascular and renal transplant surgeon at Salmaniya Medical Complex in Bahrain.

“They play with the papers,” said Dr Abdel-Rahman Shahin, a spokesman for the Egyptian Ministry of Health. “We have detected several cases of violations."

Egypt has become a hot spot for wealthy Arabs seeking to buy kidneys and undergo transplant surgery as diabetes rates in the region have soared.

The Egyptian Ministry of Health is currently investigating six cases of malpractice following a series of illegal transplant operations which included five patients from Saudi Arabia and one from Palestine. Four doctors have so far lost jobs, according to Dr Shahin.

It is illegal in Egypt to operate on foreign transplant patients and for patients to receive organs from unrelated donors, but a lack of regulation has allowed the country to become a popular place for illegal transplant surgery.

“It is illegal for a foreign patient to undergo transplantation in Egypt but it happens almost every day,” said Francis Delmonico, director of Medical Affairs at The Transplantation Society in the US.

Regional specialists estimate as many as 150 patients from the Gulf states travel to Egypt to undergo illegal transplant surgery every year.

The number has increased since the Philippines stopped the treatment of foreign patients seeking transplant surgery in April 2008 in response to international pressure.

Dr Mustafa Al-Mousawi, president for the Middle East Society for Organ Transplantation and vice president of the Kuwait Transplant Society, told Arabian Business that 13 patients from Kuwait had travelled to Egypt for illegal kidney transplants since the beginning of the year. One died following complications after surgery.

In Bahrain, at least eight patients have returned from Egypt following surgery since the May, according to Dr Abdulla. Three patients were released from a hospital in the kingdom this month following complications after operation in Egypt, he said.

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 $2,000.

The UAE has the highest percentage of adult diabetes suffers in the GCC.

In Bahrain it is estimated that a quarter of the country suffer from type 2 or adult onset diabetes while 11,000 people in Saudi are on dialysis, almost a quarter because of diabetes related illnesses.

Print | Email | Discuss this article

| Share |

READERS' COMMENTS

Click here to post a comment

Add your Comment All posts are sent to the administrator for review and are published only after approval. ArabianBusiness.com reserves the right to remove any comment at any time for any reason. Please keep your responses appropriate and on topic.
Name *
Remember me on this computer
Email *	(Your email address will not be published)
City
Country
Subject *
Comment *
Notify me of further comments
Enter the words above *
Please click post only once - your comment will not be published immediately.

MORE FROM ARABIANBUSINESS.COM