SOLYMONE BLOG: THE VICTIMS OF ORGANS TRADE IN MANILA

Line of despair: Donors in Philippines slum with scars from their operations

MANILA, Philippines - They stand in line in the stinking slums, their shirts lifted and arms raised to reveal the 13-inch long scars carved into their sides. Poor, desperate and mutilated - these are the human victims of the profitable trade in kidneys in the Philippines.
For a cash payment of £1,000 - a fantastic amount in a country where 15million people earn a dollar a day - each of these "volunteers" has donated an organ to a wealthy foreigner.

According to Al Jazeera's Marga Ortigas reporting from the town of Lopez, in impoverished communities in the Philippines, many are involved in an illegal million-dollar industry - selling their own organs on the black market.
Most of these organs are sold to foreigners, which prompted the government to ban transplants on anyone other than Filipinos in 2008. But implementation of the law has been lax.
Now the government is considering lifting the ban, as a shortage of kidneys in the country is forcing a re-think of the ban for non-relatives.