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Transplant tourism 'a global problem'

14/08/2008

Organ trafficking and transplant tourism have become "global problems", a group of experts has warned.

Governments worldwide are being urged to safeguard against transplant commercialism after a declaration opposing it was signed earlier this year.

A new warning published today in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology calls for an end to the illicit sale of human organs and the treating or organs as a commodity.

It also states that 'organ tourists' – rich patients travelling to other countries to secure transplants – are undermining a country's ability to provide organs for its own population.

Earlier this year more than 150 representatives of scientific and medical bodies, including government officials and social scientists, met in Turkey to sign a declaration condemning transplant commercialism.

"The legacy of transplantation must not be the impoverished victims of organ trafficking and transplant tourism but rather a celebration of the gift of health by one individual to another," the Istanbul declaration sates.

It explains that because unethical practices are an undesirable consequence of the global shortage of organs for transplantation, each country should implement programs to prevent organ failure and should provide organs to meet the transplant needs of its residents from donors within its own population.

Dr Francis Delmonico, professor of surgery at Harvard medical school and one of the signatories, said the internet and the willingness of rich patients to travel to other countries to purchase organs had made the issue a 'global problem'.

"The poor who sell their organs are being exploited, whether by richer people within their own countries or by transplant tourists from abroad," Dr Delmonico added.