Africa (Commonwealth Union) _ In Kenya‘s peaceful western town of Eldoret, a dark undertow exists below the suave face of life-saving operations. Behind the gleaming hospital doors and whispered deals, a shadow economy has unraveled where kidneys are being sold by the poor and purchased by desperate wealthy people.
A recent report from Kenya discusses the reality of transplant tourism and the illicit trade it fosters. In Kenya, organ trafficking is no longer a myth but a stark fact. Desperate patients from across the world— France, Japan, and Germany—travel in to pay as much as £80,000 for an illicit kidney transplant. Their donors? Poor young men, devoid of hope, sell their organs for as little as £1,800.
A multi-tiered network of brokers facilitates these procedures. International firms like Medlead sell transplant “packages” on the internet and arrange upscale accommodations for medical travelers, operating above a multi-tiered network of brokers. MedLead denies participation in donor recruitment, staying within legal boundaries on paper, but reality is more complex.
Below are neighborhood middlemen, all of them past donors themselves, who recruit others in for a cut. It is a human need pyramid scheme. The more you can get to sell, the more money you make. For some, it is a cruel decision: subsist in poverty or sell a kidney to avoid starving your family.
Transplants are being performed at Mediheal Hospital amidst these activities. Though separate from Medlead, Mediheal itself is implicated in complicity in performing illegal operations. Employees like nurse Lorna experience moral distress: “As a human, you want to help someone live even if the kidney was bought.”
Chief surgeon Dr. Srinivas Murthy denies awareness of paid donations, instead highlighting the anguish of watching patients die on dialysis. “They choose to sell. We choose to save lives,” he asserts, encouraging the government to offer young people better economic choices.
Mediheal owner, India-born entrepreneur Swarup Mishra, is adamant about the company’s commitment to ethical standards and is willing to comply with any investigation.
A brutal reality drives this enterprise: the struggle to survive meets the struggle to escape poverty. It poses a haunting question: when survival is commodified, who benefits in the end?
