Nigerian youths are scrambling for blood money through the sale of their kidney in Indian hospitals.
A report by Global Financial Integrity says about 7,000 kidneys are obtained annually by illegal means, including trafficking.
Some of the victims of Nepalese kidney traffickers.
$1b profit a year
According to the report, illegal organ trade generates between $514 million and $1 billion profit a year. It thrives around the globe to meet demand for transplant surgeries.
A Nigerian just back from Malaysia (name withheld) disclosed that a healthy kidney is sold for about $20,000 (N3.2million). Middle men who broker the deal take about 30 per cent commission.
He said increasing organ transplant cases in Indian hospitals has boosted demand for the trade in human organs, kidney in particular.
Wealthy patients in the major transplant hospitals desperate search for healthy organs can pay huge sums to facilitate kidney transplant for themselves or for loved ones.
Nigeria competes with Nepal
The source added that Nigeria may constitute about 20 per cent market share of Asia’s booming trade in human organ, only behind Nepal where it has turned into an epidemic of sorts.
The illicit trade is a passing fancy in Imo and Edo States, where youths scramble for visa to Malaysia en route India to solicit buyers.
In some communities in the two states, sudden affluence is suspected to be ‘kidney dollars’. To prove one’s innocence, the norm is to walk around without a shirt on – the only way to show there is no surgical scar on the abdomen.
Nepal is said to constitute over 50 per cent of the market, with different cartels that specialise in trafficking in human organs.
The trade has become such an epidemic in the country that unsuspecting victims are trafficked to Indian hospitals and tricked into giving away a piece of themselves for peanuts.
Unlike Nigeria where individuals volunteer a kidney for money to improve economic conditions, in Nepal kidney trafficking rackets – well organised and well funded – dupe the poor and the uneducated into giving away a piece of their body.
A chilling report by CNN details how organ traffickers in Nepalese villages lure victims away to Indian hospitals with a promise to pay them reasonable sums, but end up paying small change.
In Kavre, a tiny district close to Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, more than 300 people were said to be victims of kidney traffickers in the past five years.
In one village alone, more than 100 victims have had their kidneys “stolen” in such circumstances. In some cases five members of one family are victims of kidney trafficking rings.
How cartels operate in Nepal
CNN reported that traffickers use proxies at different stages of the process. Some approach the victim, some create the donor’s fake documents, others escort the donor to the hospital.
Nawaraj Pariyar is one of the many victims of kidney traffickers. Like many in Kavre, he makes a living from selling cattle milk and doing seasonal labour jobs on nearby farms.
Poor and uneducated, all he has are two cows, a house and a tiny plot of land.
Pariyar used to visit Kathmandu to find construction work. He was on a site in 2000 when the foreman approached him with a dubious offer: if he let doctors cut out a “hunk of meat” from his body, he would be given 30 lakhs – about $30,000.
What he was not told: the piece of “meat” was actually his kidney.
“The foreman told me that the meat will grow back,” Pariyar said.
“Then I thought, ‘If the meat will grow again, and I get about $30,000 why not?'”
“What if I die?” Pariyar remembers asking the foreman. The foreman assured him that nothing would happen.
He was given good food and clothes, and was even taken to see a movie. Then he was escorted to a hospital in Chennai, a state in southern India.
Traffickers assigned a fake name to Pariyar and told the hospital he was a relative of the recipient. The traffickers, Pariyar said, had all the fake documents ready to prove his false identity.
“At the hospital, the doctor asked me if the recipient was my sister. I was told by the traffickers to say yes. So I did.”
“I heard them repeatedly saying ‘kidney’. But I had no idea what ‘kidney’ meant. I only knew Mirgaula (the Nepali term for kidney).
“Since I didn’t know the local language, I couldn’t understand any conversation between the trafficker and the hospital staff.”
Pariyar was discharged and sent home with about 20,000 Nepali rupees – less than one per cent of the agreed amount – and a promise he would have the rest shortly.
He never received any more money and never found the trafficker.
Money in exchange for sickness
“After I came back to Nepal, I had a doubt. So, I went to the doctor. That’s when I found out I am missing a kidney,” Pariyar lamented.
Now sick and getting worse by the day, he has a urinary problem and constant severe back pain. But he cannot afford a trip to the doctor and is afraid he will die.
