UAE patients buy organs on Asia black market

Patients from the UAE are travelling to Asia’s poorest regions to buy black market organs for transplantation, some of the country’s top surgeons have revealed.

Estimates from three consultants working in renal and liver departments put the number of patients taking part in illegal transplant tourism at between 30 and 40 per year.

Their action is being fuelled by the absence of a national cadaver donation scheme, the consultants told Medical Times.

No cadaver transplants have been carried out in the UAE, despite 1993 federal legislation permitting the practice. Only transplants using living donors are currently performed.

As a result, patients are travelling to Egypt, India, Pakistan and the Philippines for illegal kidney transplants, and to China for liver transplants, where the organs of executed prisoners are offered for sale. Each pays between $5,000 and $15,000 per organ.

Consultants working in UAE hospitals said they see the patients on their return for the treatment of infections and bleeding caused by substandard hygiene and poorly performed surgeries.

Welcare Hospital in Dubai sees about 15 patients with complications from illegal kidney and liver transplants every year.

“There are a few that are coming from China who get livers from executed people,” said Dr Saeed Al Shaikh, a consultant hepatologist.

“There are three to five per year, it stopped only two months before the Olympics, and we hear they are going to start again,” he added.

Dr Mustafa Ahmed, a specialist nephrologist at the same hospital, revealed one returning patient had recently died of tuberculosis. “Buying organs has a lot of risk. I would estimate that 10 percent of those who do it will die.”

“We have three road traffic accidents deaths every day and if we had a proper scheme here there would be enough organs for everyone,” he added.

A further 17 to 25 illegal post-op kidney patients present annually at Sheikh Khalifa Medical City (SKMC) in Abu Dhabi, according to Dr Arbar Khan, head of the multi-organ transplant programme.

“We estimate that 35 to 50 people go abroad every year, to every part of the world, but mainly Egypt, India and Pakistan for organ transplants. Around 50 percent of these are illegal,” he said.

Moves to end the organ trade were taken by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in May this year when 78 countries, including the UAE, signed the Declaration of Istanbul on Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism. WHO strongly advocates cadaver schemes.

The UAE’s reluctance to create a cadaver donor programme has been repeatedly blamed on the need for a more detailed definition of brain death.

This has been refuted by Dr Ali Abdul Karim Al Obaidli, consultant nephrologist at SKMC and acting clinical affairs director for Abu Dhabi Health Services Company, who said health authorities simply need to lay down procedures for doctors to follow.

“We are in talks with the Ministry of Health, but the main message is that the 1993 law has enough detail to permit this. It just lacks detail on policy and procedure - on how to do it,” Dr Obaidli said.     

A final definition on the practice should be released within the next few months, he claimed.