Surgeon wants international organ trade to be licensed to end 'transplant tourism'

The illegal international market in transplant organs taken from living donors should become a licensed trade, according to a leading surgeon.

Professor Maqsood Noorani said 'transplant tourism', where patients travel abroad for operations banned in Britain, is being exploited by unscrupulous operators who are putting donors and recipients at risk.

A worldwide shortage of organs means the trade in organs such as kidneys should be legalised and brought under the control of governments, he said.

Professor Noorani, a former transplant surgeon at Bart's and The London NHS Trust, has firsthand experience of trying to save the lives of Britons who suffered complications after travelling to Pakistan to buy a kidney from a live donor.

He said living donors in poor countries need compensation for their organs and it should be the responsibility of the government to provide it rather than leaving it to the market.

'In the past few years, transplant tourism has become a lucrative business in Lahore, Rawalpindiand Islamabad,' he wrote in the British Medical Journal. 'Private hospitals shamelessly advertise their services in newspapers and on the internet.

'Taxi drivers and touts know the addresses of all the transplant hospitals and brokers busily scavenge for desperate, poor people to meet the increasing demand for kidneys by foreigners.'

Pakistan should establish an authority with the private sector to encourage live donations. Donors should be compensated with offers of accommodation or education for their children instead of cash.

He said: 'Everyone benefits from transplant surgery except the donor. Live donors are heroes - they deserve a medal. One cannot pay compensation to donors in the UK - that would tarnish the whole process. But in Pakistan there is exploitation because people are poor.'

Professor Noorani is the second respected surgeon in recent years to call for the sale of human organs in Britain to be legalised and regulated.

In 2003, Professor Nadey Hakim, at the time president of the Royal Society of Medicine's transplant committee, said he believed a controlled trade in organs would cut transplant tourism.

Other doctors object to donors being paid for their organs, particularly in developing countries where they are likely to be in poor health.

They say the supply of organs could be increased through a change in British law to bring in a system of 'presumed consent', with safeguards, which would mean that during their lifetime adults must register an objection to donation.

 Did You Know?

In India, Pakistan and the Philippines, most donors receive less than £1,000 when they sell a kidney. But brokers and surgeons often charge transplant recipients from the West more than £40,000.