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

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.
Post a Comment