When we visit the market to buy groceries, meals, and other items, just under our noses, there is a market where human organs are bought and sold. And this industry is referred to as organ trafficking. The trading of human organs, tissues, or other bodily parts, typically for transplantation, is referred to as “organ trade” or “Red market.”
Despite the fact that there is a global shortage of transplantable organs, all nations bar Iran forbid the commercial exchange of human organs. Despite these restrictions, transplant tourism and organ trafficking are nonetheless common.
In essence, it is a black market for human organs, tissues, and body parts. You’ll be horrified to learn that organ trafficking is permitted in Iran. There is a significant difference between organ trafficking and donation.
Why does organ trafficking occur?
An international scarcity of organs and an increase in the number of people dying after waiting too long for an organ are the two main factors driving global organ trafficking. Organs typically come from populations at risk in nations with loose rules against the trade in organs and are given to recipients in richer nations.
Despite national and international efforts, it’s estimated that 10% of transplants globally are unlawful. The demand for organs, however, is so great that it also fuels the growth of the black market for illegally obtained body parts. T
here are individuals and organizations who invest countless millions of dollars in the trafficking of these body parts. Worldwide reports of organ trafficking have been made. Between 2003 and 2016, organ trafficking was discovered in 25 countries, mostly in North Africa and the Middle East, although there have also been incidents in Central and South America and Europe.
33 others have made observations on how vulnerable and poor people in China, Egypt, India, Iraq, Pakistan, the Philippines, Central and South America, and Eastern Europe appear to be the most often targeted populations for organ trafficking, commercialization or transplant tourism.
Most victims are male and between the ages of 20 and 40. Furthermore, because there is such a severe problem with organ trafficking, it is very challenging to find both the victims and the perpetrators.
How do organ traffickers do their work under the shadows?
However, because of strong demand and very weak levels of law enforcement, organ trafficking occupies a crucial position with global organized criminal groups. The only thing that is felt is the terrible medical imprint left by organ traffickers, who make money in the shadows.
It exposes vulnerable groups, also known as “donors,” and first-world receivers, sometimes known as “recipients,” to severe exploitation and lifelong health effects.
Traffickers plan the donor recruitment from a position of weakness, and victims are not often thoroughly checked for their suitability as healthy donors. Patients in need of an organ may fall victim to a trafficker acting as a “reputable” representative of a benevolent organ matching organization if they are desperate enough.
Exploitation of people’s finances is a major factor on both sides of this equation. Additionally, those who trade organs may also engage in prostitution, labor, or other types of human trafficking. There are cases where an organ donor may have also been a victim of sex trafficking, labor trafficking, or other forms of exploitation, leading the reverse of human trafficking.
Before the victim even realizes what is happening, the organ trafficker will have physically abducted them. The victim would then wake up in a bathtub with shoddy sutures on their side. They subsequently learn that they lack a kidney a multi-level exploitation equation. More frequently, examples of people being tricked into giving their kidney or liver for a few thousand dollars occur in underprivileged and illiterate populations.
You might be curious as to how this occurs?
Money is a strong motive in organised crime, as it is in other crimes. Hospital examinations are frequently necessary to make sure that donors are giving voluntarily, although hospitals are susceptible to deception. Once blood samples have been obtained and submitted, matches may be made, and victims sign documents certifying that they are giving voluntarily.
Brokers then make hundreds of thousands of dollars to “schmeared” to all the many criminals who had contact with the illegally obtained life-saving organ along the way. If the donor is not provided the medical care required for a full recovery, they are left with a few thousand bucks and serious health problems.
Plan of organ trafficker is fake promises
Numerous organisations and trafficking sources keep tabs on those who are seeking for work desperately due to their financial predicament. Then, the people who traffic in organs make an effort to contact them and promise them employment.
Once the individual had arrived in the new country, the broker informed them that they did not have the job they had applied for and informed them of the importance of organ donation. Then the broker offers them the option to donate with their own free will and get payment, or else they will take it forcibly.
In the worst-case situation, the organ donor may not even receive compensation. A Sudanese guy working in Cairo claims to have been in this field since 2003 and that his family’s business is trafficking in organs.
Covid-19 (a perfect uproar for organ red market)
Many people were affected by COVID-19 and worried about their long-term well-being. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic’s mounting employment losses worldwide, desperate individuals are turning to social media for new income opportunities, and research suggests that this has led to a fatal rise in illegal organ trafficking.
These individuals, who were previously illiterate, uninsured, and jobless, are now even more compelled to accept offers that they shouldn’t. Both national and international versions exist for the red market. Using Red Market, one may exchange human organs, tissues, or other bodily parts, generally for transplantation.
It is accomplished through business dealings. Hospital records reveal a decline in the number of transplants carried out during the previous six months. A significant backlog of patients on the waiting list has resulted from this. Lack of availability has made meeting the growing demand for organs more difficult.
Even social networking sites like Facebook have become places for the organ ’brokers’ to sell organs. Assam and Calcutta are this story’s most recent play areas. Paid kidney donors and brokers who arrange communication with interested receivers and hospitals have been detained over the past several days in many Assamese areas.
According to newspaper sources, the majority of them are undocumented workers who have lost their jobs as a result of Covid and are deeply in debt. These kidneys were allegedly intended for a number of hospitals in Calcutta.
Despite being a latecomer to the lucrative field of compensated organ transplantation, according to press sources, Calcutta has recently become a hotbed. While transplants had mostly ceased in the rest of India due to Covid, certain hospitals in Calcutta appear to have carried on as usual.
Some insights about organ trafficking in India
“In Chennai, the victims of human trafficking for organ removal are largely part of the fishing communities who lost their homes in the 2004 tsunami. The traffickers began to target hundreds of people after the tsunami with good ‘offers’. Brokers even provided a home where such organ ‘donors’ could reside temporarily following surgery.
Assam has cracked down on a large human organ trafficking ring that convinced debt-ridden people to sell their kidneys. According to the police, three persons have been detained in connection with the Dharamtul village in Assam case.
Where at least a dozen locals are suspected of selling their kidneys to organ traffickers. Villagers have been forced to sell their kidneys due to poverty, debt from microloans, and the promise of quick money.
Mason Sumanta Das, 37, hasn’t had a job since the lockdown started last year. His son required a heart surgery, but because the epidemic had stopped all building work, there was no money available. Mr. Das sold his kidney because he needed money so badly.
He was promised Rs. 5 lakhs, but received just Rs. 1.5 lakh. He can no longer work hard labour to support himself because he lost a kidney. “I was unable to care for my youngster adequately. He suffers from a cardiac defect. We barely received 1.50 lakh. Now I’m having health problems. I frequently feel fatigued and can’t move large objects anymore,” said Mr. Das. (Source: NDTV)
In March, an operation was performed on a four and a half-year-old child in a Delhi hospital. Her father said that one of her kidneys vanished following the operation two months later.
According to (THOA ACT 1994) No hospital, unless registered under this Act, shall perform, or be associated with, or assist in, the removal, storage, or transplantation of any human organ; and (b) no medical professional or other person shall perform, or cause to be performed, or assist in.
However, organ traffickers continue to develop ways to carry out their schemes and fuel the growth of the illegal trade. These days, human organs are sold in a place dubbed the “red market” for a fee. The government should take harsh action against it, which has been overlooked from the beginning, and those who have been coerced to give their organs should immediately alert police authorities in order to halt all of these types of operations.