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.

Source: Marga Ortigas, Al Jazeera