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Offline Clark

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Bangladesh: When poverty forces to sell organ!
« on: October 02, 2011, 08:21:32 PM »
http://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/more.php?news_id=148916&date=2011-09-10

Opinion: When poverty forces to sell organ!
Shafiqul Alam

Poverty in Bangladesh is one of the major issues which afflict the people. Poverty, at times, is unbearable and unavoidable in many cases. It can be best described when a person finds it difficult to meet the basic necessities of life. Unfortunately, more than 40 per cent of the country's population is poor. As so many people live in poverty, many, without having other option left, sell their organs like kidney. The logic behind selling kidney is that it would not bring end of life and they would be able to survive with one kidney. With this simple belief, a person sells his kidney to get out of poverty.

Even though, many expected that huge population of the country would work as human resource and guide to prosperity, the opposite thing is happening persistently in actuality. Due to the lack of access to education, many become trapped in this vicious cycle of poverty and the unfortunate part is that many of our educated people are also not productive as they should have been. On the other hand, though, various NGOs were established to eradicate poverty but disappointingly, they are now becoming a burden on the poor.

A recent report, published in a Bangla daily, on kidney trade, has made it quite clear that all forms of odd practices prevail in the country. According to that report, more than 200 people sold one of their kidneys in Joypurhat during the last five years. According to another newspaper report, a man sold off one of his kidneys for Tk 1,70,000 to pay off his loan, which he borrowed from an NGO about one and a half years ago.

Again, according to a recent feature, a young man, who went to sell his kidney, fell into a trap of dishonest people and doctors cut his lever instead of kidney. But the man, for whom the liver was bought, died after liver plantation.

It is okay if people with sound health donate kidney to save the lives of their near and dear ones, but selling kidney to pay off loan, under any circumstances, is unacceptable. What is worse, loan, which has been taken by poor people to be better off, has deteriorated the situation and created a vicious cycle of poverty. There are many things to ponder -- these people even did not know about the health risks of selling kidney while doctors, who were engaged in operation, did not inform law enforcement agency about illegal kidney trading.

This act of kidney trade for money is simply an immoral practice. The poor do not have the luxury of thinking ethics as poverty is a harsh reality of life to many Bangladeshis and a challenge they face in their every day life. However, they fail to recognise that by selling kidney, they can solve their problems only for the time being.

Apart from the fact that it is not a long-term solution, it has not been proven that kidney sale improves poor people's living condition rather several studies, conducted in other countries, confirm that the financial status of kidney donors even deteriorate after the donation. Besides, it can be questioned whether this way of alleviating poverty is the right one -- it forms a resignation with respect to the existence of poverty without any prospect of eliminating the structural causes.

In Bangladesh, like many other countries with similar socio-economic status, people claim that they have better family values than the west. The ground reality does not corroborate with our claims as it is found that the rich people search for kidneys among poor people instead of searching among their relatives. However, what is worse, most vendors receive only a fraction of the eventual price for a kidney due to the racketeering doctors, middlemen and brokers make much larger sums than sellers do.

The government should formulate stricter regulations on kidney donation with the provision of close monitoring. Any laxity will end up ruining people's health and families.
Unrelated directed kidney donor in 2003, recipient and I both well.
620 time blood and platelet donor since 1976 and still giving!
Elected to the OPTN/UNOS Boards of Directors & Executive, Kidney Transplantation, and Ad Hoc Public Solicitation of Organ Donors Committees, 2005-2011
Proud grandpa!

 

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