How do illegal kidney transplant gangs work?

In the last two months, two gangs were arrested from Lahore who were involved in illegal kidney transplants and were illegally carrying out the work of kidney transplants inside different houses by taking lakhs of rupees from the patients.

Illegal kidney transplantation is not a new thing, but such groups have been working for a long time, they are caught, but this work is still going on.

Earlier in the month of August, a group was caught from Lahore who was involved in kidney transplants of foreign residents, while a few days ago another group was caught, regarding which caretaker Chief Minister Punjab Mohsin Naqvi revealed in his press conference. That the leader of this group, Dr. Fawad Mukhtar, has been arrested five times for the same illegal work.

Mohsin Naqvi said that this group had done 328 illegal kidney operations. The operator with Dr. Fawad as an assistant was mainly a motor mechanic who also performed the task of anesthetizing the patients.

He said that this gang was more active in Lahore, Taxila and Azad Kashmir, kidney operations were done in homes instead of operation theatres.

Mohsin Naqvi also revealed in his press conference that these groups used to charge 3 million rupees from Pakistani patients and 1 crore rupees from foreign patients for kidney transplant.

The Caretaker Chief Minister said that this group has admitted to 328 kidney operations while three patients died during this.

Addressing the conference, Chief Minister Mohsin Naqvi said that Dr. Fawad Mukhtar and all the members of his gang have been caught.

According to him, Fawad Mukhtar illegally stole, cheated or paid hundreds of people’s kidneys and transplanted them.

Mohsin Naqvi also said that the Chief Secretary Punjab and his team are working, the prosecution was directed to present a strong challan.

Mohsin Naqvi said that the Health Care Commission has to be fully active, the law is there, we have no room for change, but we will make the law more effective to the extent possible. Action is required in the presence of law. Handover of the case to the FIA ​​will also be considered.

Caretaker Chief Minister said that in Punjab Human Organ Transplant Authority (PHOTA) people had to face humiliation. Therefore, we will review the proposal to make Punjab Human Organ Transplantation Authority a single window.

Procedures for renal transplant cohorts

In this regard, Professor Dr. Nadeem Bin Nusrat, Chairman of Kidney Transplant at Punjab Kidney and Liver Transplant Institute, told Independent Urdu: ‘When there was no regulatory body for human organ transplant like the Punjab Human Organ Transplant Authority, the dynamics were different. Now, since laws have been made, the same thing that was previously legal under these laws has now become illegal.’

He said that it used to be the case that any person willingly signed and gave his kidney even for money, then the law could not stop it. “Now that the law has been made, no one can sell a kidney even at will. At present, if anyone is doing this, it is illegal.’

According to Dr. Nadeem Bin Nusrat, no hospital can allow any such illegal activity because doing so will shut down the hospital.

“Therefore, these illegal practitioners go to a farm house or home instead of hospitals and carry out kidney transplants.”

He said that two or three people are involved in this process, one person is the one who is conducting all the tests. This person is a pharmacist of any medical store or an unlicensed pharmacist or a person running a laboratory. They have a whole network of tests they usually do on patients to see who is a match, including blood samples, blood group tests, urine tests or tissue typing. Tissue matching All these tests have to be done in the laboratory, these people have opened their laboratories from there they do these tests which are both right and wrong.’

According to him, ‘They then reach out to the people who can do the transplant or the operation and lure them with a huge amount of money.’

Dr. Nadeem bin Nusrat says that a person whose monthly income is one and a half lakh rupees can get a large amount of money sitting down and his skill is that he can remove a kidney from one person and transplant it into another, so what should he do? Objection may be?

He said that ‘They form a team with this surgeon and he also arranges for the doctor to anesthetize the patient.’

According to him, people involved in illegal kidney transplants keep a small truck in which the necessary equipment to carry out the transplant process, including oxygen cylinders, anesthetic gases, are easily transported. They come and it’s like they have a little ambulance.

‘They take this truck to a house and keep the goods in a room of the house, operate on the patient under anesthesia and after the story is over and the patient’s health is restored, they leave him home in the same ambulance.’

According to Dr. Nadeem Nusrat, “If there is no raid and these people are not caught, this whole process is completed in six to ten hours.”

Does the patient not know that this is illegal? In response to this question, Dr. Nadeem Nusrat said: ‘The patient knows that he is doing illegal work. The law says that the kidney must belong to a relative, such as a parent, sibling or child or spouse or first second cousin. But if you can’t find your match in a relative, you’ll be out of your bloodline.’

He said that when they go outside the bloodline and look for a kidney, these people reach out to poor people and lure them with Rs. Now a whole life is spent on one kidney if the other kidney is healthy. The person agrees to donate his kidney.

In this way, these people buy kidney for money and the patient who does not want to take the kidney of relatives or is not getting a match considers it right to buy kidney for money.

He said: ‘Usually the patients involved in this work are the ones who can afford it and there’s a lot of money involved, so it’s tempting for the doctor as well as the person selling the kidney. Money is being received and it is a question of life and death of the one who invests.’

How can this illegal trade be stopped?

In this regard, Independent Urdu also contacted the Caretaker Provincial Minister for Health, Dr. Javed Akram.

Dr. Javed Akram said: ‘First of all, cases should be registered against such doctors and their colleagues who are involved in this work under terrorism. They also kidnap people. Harassment and later blackmail.’

He said that the nature of crime in this process is very high because they operate in very substandard places. ‘I think stealing someone’s kidney also falls under the category of terrorism.’

He said, ‘Well, there are laws against such people and there are severe punishments, but when these people are caught, they come out after fighting with the victims. Like the recently arrested Dr. Fawad, who was arrested several times before but kept coming out on the sly. Now we have said that the state should prosecute in this matter.’

According to Javed Akram, according to Hota laws, only a relative can donate his organ, but if a relative’s organ does not match, there is also a law regarding what the patient can do, but it is a whole procedure. Hota and hospital committees are formed but it is a long process.

He said that people are also aware of this law and they apply for it but there is a high possibility of misuse, so Phota is very strict about it but it is better. That we should move to cadaveric transplant (posthumous transplantation) which is happening all over the world.

In this, take out the organs of people who are brain stem dead and register people as donors.

He said, ‘We campaigned a lot for this and have been campaigning for a long time, but there was no significant success in it. We have only five hundred donors registered from all over Punjab.’

He said that a little religious element is also included in it, for which whenever we conducted a campaign or conducted seminars in this regard, some scholars were also included in them, but the public is not particularly interested in this regard. Found.

The health minister said, ‘If we move towards post-mortem transplant and create a pool of donors, this illegal practice of transplantation can be eliminated.’

According to Dr. Nadeem Bin Nusrat, there is nothing mentioned in Phota laws that if a relative is not a match, then where to get an organ for transplantation. Found.’

He said that donor pools should be formed in this regard and this pool should be expanded so that the scope of organ donors is widened.

‘If someone is donating a kidney voluntarily without money and he is not even a blood relative, then he should be allowed to donate, why stop it?’

Pihota currently has no such provision.

He said that kidney transplant cannot be done in your drawing room in any society of the world, my question is why do these people leave the accused?

‘We are living in a society where there is lawlessness. If there was a law, people like Dr. Fawad would be here?’

How is organ donation done after death?

Regarding post-mortem organ donation, Dr. Nadeem Nusrat said that ‘in Europe and America, if any organization that is working on post-mortem transplants gives this authority to the hospitals and the hospitals issue a donor card. It is written that I am an organ donor. People keep this card in their pocket all the time.

If there is an accident and the person is expected to die, a team of transplants arrives there, they insert tubes and take the patient to the ICU and put them on a ventilator so that they don’t die. go

“When it is assured about these patients that they are brain dead, then their family members are shown their donor card and permission is taken from them.” Even then, if the family members do not give their permission, no organ can be removed from their body. We have no such system.

What is Pi Hota?

According to the information provided on the official website of Punjab Human Organ Transplantation Authority (PHOTA), it is a provincial regulator, which was established in 2013 when the illegal trade and transplantation of human cells, organs and tissues in Punjab province. The culture of K was widely revealed.

It is the primary provincial body responsible for monitoring organ and stem cell transplantation and organ donor registration and measures to increase donation in Punjab.

The Photas regulate private and public hospitals that remove, store, and use human cells, organs, and tissues for medical treatment, and oversee all approvals for deceased and living donations.

This is done by ensuring that human tissue and organs are used for therapeutic purposes safely and ethically, and with appropriate consent.

PPOTA engages its registered hospitals, physicians and communities to implement the Punjab Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues (Amendment) Act, 2012, to ensure that people have access to appropriate transplantation and to ensure safety, quality, efficacy of donation and humaneness. Cell transplantation can be ensured and illegal transplantation can be prevented.

What is Hota Amendment Act 2012?

In this regard, Advocate Ahmar Majeed told Independent Urdu: ‘This law is from 2010 but as far as Punjab is concerned, some amendments were made in 2012, which were not major amendments, such as where the federal government had written, the Punjab government had written. .’

He said that the biggest problem with this law is that if we look at its section 14, it says that a magistrate’s court will try a case only when the authority constituted under this law complains to the magistrate. Enter. Or if the affected person has given 15 days notice to the authority and the authority has not done anything in those 15 days, then he can go to the magistrate.

According to Advocate Ahmar Majeed, there cannot be a direct FIR, but a request of the prosecution or a private complaint. This is the reason why when the police arrest the accused, they cannot detain him for a long time.

He said that the same problem exists in the recent incident that the complaint process is so complicated and slow that the people involved in such cases do not get any punishment.

Ahmar Majeed is of the opinion that ‘Unless the crime is punishable, the punishments will not be made more severe as it is written in the law that if the crime is committed for the first time, the offender will be given some punishment. And if he does it a second time, the license will be cancelled. “When you give people this kind of leeway, people get the opportunity to do such illegal things. Here, it is difficult to get the punishment the first time, and the second time is a distant thing.”

What does the Punjab Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues (Amended) Act 2012 say?

According to section nine, ‘removal of human organs for any purpose other than medical treatment is prohibited for transplantation. No donor and any person authorized to authorize the removal of a human organ shall permit the removal of a human organ for any purpose other than for therapeutic purposes.’

Sub-section one of section ten states that a person who offers his services to or in any medical institution or hospital and who in any way engages in the removal of any human organ for the purpose of transplantation. , cooperates with or assists him. Without the authority, the punishment will be imprisonment which may extend to ten years and fine which may extend to one million rupees.

Sub-section two thereof states that where any person convicted under sub-section one is a registered medical practitioner, his name shall also be reported to the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council for a period of time for appropriate action. be removed from the council’s register. Three years for first offense and life imprisonment for subsequent offences.

According to Section 11 of the Act and its sub-sections, trading in human organs shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to ten years and with fine which may extend to one million rupees.