FRIDAY, June 13 (HealthDay News) -- When patients cross borders to receive organ transplants, there may be serious ethical, clinical, social and economic problems, which the term "transplant tourism" does not suggest, according to an article in the June 14 issue of BMJ.
Leigh Turner, Ph.D., of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, argues that the term "transplant tourism" is misleading, even as interest in it grows, because it ignores the risks people take when they seek organs in other countries. These include inadequate pre-transplant screening and post-transplant follow-up care, and fraud. Sellers also face pressures from organ brokers, debt collectors and indifferent doctors, and donors may fall deeper into poverty.
In a related article, Maqsood A. Noorani, a transplant surgeon based in London, U.K., observes that transplant tourism in developing countries -- such as Pakistan, where private hospitals widely promote such services -- can have severe health and other consequences for both the transplant recipients and donors. Banning transplant tourism altogether, however, would result in deaths of transplant candidates, he argues. Western governments need to pressure Pakistan to set up an oversight authority to monitor proper transplantation care and adequate reward of donors.
"The Pakistani government should strive to protect its people by reducing poverty, the reason why desperate people sell their organs," Noorani states. "A member of the Punjab provincial assembly recently highlighted this issue, saying that selling kidneys is the second option among poor people to get money -- the first being selling their children."
Abstract - Turner
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Abstract - Noorani
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