Most popular destinations for transplant tourism: China, India, Pakistan

Australians heading overseas for 'transplant tourism' could help organ traffickers, experts say
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Follow the money. This is true and this is the danger of transplant tourism. Concerns the Chinese Government still forcibly harvested organs from prisoners and minority groups.

As part of the totalitarian regime in China, many of the people in minority groups are biometrically analyzed, so that whole trade then is about people being kidnapped or snatched because they fit the biometrics of the person who’s prepared to buy the organ. The official version of the Chinese government is that organs were donated ethically.

More people in Australia are looking overseas for donor organs than previously thought, and experts are warning “transplant tourism” could be perpetuating the global illegal trade of human body parts. A new study published in the Medical Journal of Australia has found the number of people heading overseas for organ transplants is higher than recorded in official organ donor registry statistics.

Of 200 transplant doctors surveyed, more than two-thirds had patients who had raised the prospect of overseas donations with them, and more than half had cared for at least one patient who had traveled overseas to receive a transplant.

Most people who traveled overseas for these surgeries went for kidney transplants because they were typically the only patients well enough to travel.

For the people who traveled overseas for donations, the most popular destinations were:

  • China โ€” 31 percent
  • India โ€” 16 percent
  • Pakistan โ€” 9 percent
  • The Philippines

26 percent of people who traveled overseas for a transplant had a complication โ€” predominantly bacterial and viral infections,” he said.

The researchers found 93 percent of people who went overseas for a transplant was also born overseas. The study also found nearly two-thirds of those going overseas were actually traveling to a third country for the procedure.

In poorer countries like the Philippines, Middle East, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh it’s more that people are incredibly poor. They might be paid a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars, but then that organ might be sold for $50,000, $100,000. While humans can live with only one kidney it was problematic to buy them from disadvantaged communities.

Injecting drug users, men who have sex with men, prisoners and sex workers are often rejected because they are considered at increased risk of contractingย  HIV viruses.

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