Illegal organ trafficking on the rise in Africa – The Sierra Leone Telegraph

Sierra Leone Telegraph: September 22, 2024:

The growing trade in human organs “has reached epidemic levels, yet there is still a lot of silence about it in public,” Nigerian human rights lawyer Frank Tietie told DW.

“You would expect that public condemnation would be much greater, but that is not the case.”

According to a report by Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a Washington DC-based think tank that focuses on corruption, illicit trafficking and money laundering, between $840 million and $1.7 billion (€755 million to €1.5 billion) is generated annually by human trafficking for organ removal.

The organ trafficking industry is driven by a high demand for organs and the severe shortage of legal organ donorsImage: epa/dpa/picture-alliance

Organ donation and transplantation are well-established medical practices that are important for sustaining patients with failing organs. The procedures can be highly successful when performed with informed consent and transparency.

But there are concerns that organ donation is often “driven primarily by poverty rather than the noble motivation of saving a life or helping someone’s medical condition,” Tietie told DW.

“People sell their organs or certain medical personnel, especially doctors, who are unscrupulous and often damage their patients’ organs without their knowledge.”

‘How much does my kidney cost?’

The sale of human organs is illegal throughout Africa. In 2022, however, the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya, felt compelled to make a Facebook post saying “We don’t buy kidneys!” after the medical institution said that “How much is my kidney?” was their most embedded question.

But according to Willis Okumu, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, not all “irregular” transplants are forced. While investigating organ trafficking in Eldoret, a city in western Kenya, Okumu found young men willing to sell their kidneys for “quick cash.”

“They were not really coerced in any way,” he said, adding that donors were offered “up to $6,000.”

To put that in perspective, according to a European Parliament document, a kidney recipient can pay more than $150,000.

Prisoners of the Nigerian Mafia

Okumu, however, says donors rarely received that much money. He recalls seeing “some young guys with scars on their stomachs” that showed they had undergone the procedure. They didn’t fear prosecution because it was difficult for authorities to enforce the law.

“Most of them, when they came back, had investments or bought a motorbike or built a new house,” Okumu added, saying donors were recruiting other young men to donate their kidneys to feed a growing black market outside Kenya.

Growth of an organ trade

While details about the illegal trade in human organs are unclear, Egypt, Libya, South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria are believed to be the worst affected countries in Africa.

The reasons for this are complex, but because regulations on transplants and organ donation vary by region, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has focused attention on trafficking for organ removal, also known as transplant tourism. It has also raised concerns that illicit organ transplants are flowing from vulnerable populations to wealthier recipients.

According to the Global Observatory on Organ Donation and Transplantation, less than 10% of needed transplants are performed worldwide. As a result, some patients try to obtain organs illegally.

There is also a relatively low number of medical centres performing legal transplants in Africa. For example, a 2020 World Health Organisation (WHO) report listed only 35 kidney transplant centres across the continent. This type of undercapacity has been attributed to lack of accessibility, limited expertise and inadequate financial support.

Kidneys are among the most commonly traded human organs because donors can continue to live after a kidney is removed.

An advanced operation

The illegal and lucrative nature of the trade means that organ trafficking networks are highly organised. The skills required to carry out complex operations, both on the donor and recipient sides, connecting buyers and sellers, all while avoiding the attention of international law enforcement agencies, means that organ traffickers involve members of the medical sector, local criminal groups and even politicians.

Okumu believes that what he saw in western Kenya is part of a larger syndicate of international traffickers in human body parts. The young men he met “talked about doctors who couldn’t speak Swahili and were of Indian descent,” leading him to conclude that the operation was international.

Last year, a jury in London convicted Nigerian Senator Ike Ekweremadu, his wife and a doctor of plotting to exploit a young man from Lagos for his kidney.

It was the first time in the UK that a conviction has been handed down for organ harvesting under modern slavery legislation.

Tietie, the Nigerian human rights lawyer, said the prospect of financial gain from human organs has raised fears that so-called baby factories in Nigeria could also become targets for organ traffickers, stressing “the close link between human trafficking and organ harvesting.”

Tietie stressed that local medical centres also have a responsibility not to exploit vulnerable people.

“What happens when medical personnel, doctors in very elite hospitals in Abuja, Lagos, actually pose before their rich patients and tell them not to worry, that they can arrange for a poor merchant to sell these organs?” he said.

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/illegal-organ-traffickers-in-africa-prey-on-worlds-poor/a-70242247