Buenos Aires, Jun 25 (EFE).- Bolivian surgeons “sell organs … illegally … (which) are transplanted into their patients, many of them Argentines,” reported the daily Clarin here on Sunday, referring specifically to kidneys.
According to an investigation carried out by the paper, Santa Cruz de la Sierra doctors sell “packages deals” that include “regular (hospital) rooms and intensive care for donor and recipient, two operating rooms in simultaneous use, nuclear medicine, a blood bank, medicines, … the organ and the transplant” operation.
The package costs “$30,000 if it’s with a common blood type, but if the recipient has a difficult (blood) type, the cost goes up by $5,000,” said a surgeon consulted by a reporter posing as a relative of a potential transplant recipient.
Another doctor said that the cost of the “organ and the transplant (operation)” would be $40,000.
“After the recipient patient sends in his individual medical analysis and the person who is performing (the transplant) selects several donors according to (the recipient’s) blood type, the doctor performs immunological, infection and compatibility tests to verify that the kidney will function in the recipient,” said the physicians consulted.
The daily reported that many of the people who decide to sell a kidney have no money and elect to give up an organ in exchange for the cash.
Argentina’s Incucai Bioethics Commission said that “it’s necessary to distinguish an altruistic organ donor from one who is … marketing” one of their body parts.
“One should not call it donation in the case of aiding the commerce in organs, which is legally prohibited in Argentina and lacks moral legitimacy,” the commission told Clarin. EFE
