Illegal Organ Trade Flourishing

According to World Health organization, almost 10,000 kidneys are sold in the black market every year or one kidney sold every hour, The Guardian reported on Sunday.

"The illegal trade worldwide was falling back in about 2006-07 – there was a decrease in 'transplant tourism. The trade may well be increasing again. There have been recent signs that that may well be the case. There is a growing need for transplants and big profits to be made. It's ever growing, it's a constant struggle. The stakes are so big, the profit that can be made so huge, that the temptation is out there," Luc Noel, a doctor and WHO official told The Guardian.

A study published by the World health organization in 2007 had said that each year some 2000 Indians sell a kidney. Pakistan and Philippines are the two countries where the trade picked up after India banned organ trade in 1994, the study said. Countries that export organs include Bolivia, Brazil, Iraq, Israel, the Republic of Moldova, Peru and Turkey.

"Organ importer" countries include Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the USA, the study said.

A new study presented at National Kidney Foundation's 2012 Spring Clinical Meetings had said that obesity will soon create a shortage of organ donors in U.S, said. According to reports as many as 92,000 people were on waiting list for kidneys in the year 2011 alone.

"Foreigners from the Middle East, Asia and sometimes Europe come and are paying $100,000 to $200,000 for a transplant. Often they are Chinese expats or patients of Chinese descent," Jim Feehally, a professor of renal medicine at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS trust told The Guardian,

"The people who gain are the rich transplant patients who can afford to buy a kidney, the doctors and hospital administrators, and the middlemen, the traffickers. It's absolutely wrong, morally wrong," he added.

A very small amount of money involved in the organ trade goes to the donor usually around $1000 or less per kidney, says World Health Organization.