Uma Keni Prabhu recounts the great kidney conspiracy that she unravelled in the 80s.
Uma Keni Prabhu recounts the great kidney conspiracy that she unravelled in the 80s.
The year was 1989. The Transplantation of Human Organs Act 1994 was non-existent. Also absent was a comprehensive cadaver programme for donation of solid organs.
The setting was perfect for organ trade to thrive and proliferate. The commerce of organs, for want of better opportunities, however was restricted to kidneys.
The modus operandi was simple. The recipients, wealthy patients mostly from the West Asia, who suffered renal failure due to diabetes and hypertension, contacted certain private hospitals in South Mumbai. The hospitals would introduce them to a broker, who would then procure kidneys from unrelated donors at a price. The donors: Ignorant slum dwellers, either duped or lured into parting with their kidney for a price, which ranged anywhere between Rs35,000 to Rs80,000.
With an estimated two lakh patients dying of renal failure each year, the demand for kidneys has certainly surpassed supply today. And globalisation has made slum
dwellers smarter and enhanced their negotiation skills. The bean shaped organ, therefore, commands a much higher price today - anywhere between Rs4,00,000 and Rs5,00,000.
Research showed that almost all unrelated donors sold a kidney in an attempt to pay off debt or to make ends meet. Since post operative care was non-existent, the donors would end up spending most of their earnings in combating complications that emerged following neglect. Many lost confidence to work and some even lost their lives.
Most donors were migrant construction workers from AP, TN and Karnataka; mill workers from Konkan or just beggars. Some were habitual blood donors, who earned about
Rs100 per bottle of blood. The brokers frequented blood banks in the city to entice these blood donors. At Shantinagar, a shanty town at Dahisar, a patient operated upon for appendix had a kidney removed as well, without his consent. In the hutment colony that had mushroomed on the pavement running parallel to the Mahim railway station, there were 150 people, who sported a prominent scar on the left side of the abdomen. None of them knew its reason of existence. It’s another story that later some of these donors turned into brokers and started independent operations or supplied the originals brokers with people for a referral fee. Donors were being packed off home after an 11- day stay in the hospital. There was no follow up whatsoever. A mill worker at Kala Chowky came to know about his missing kidney only after he approached his family doctor following severe complications.
It was not smooth sailing for the recipients either. The rate of rejection of kidneys was extremely high, which prompted many an embassy to lodge a complaint with the government of India. The reason? Most hospitals did not evaluate the donors medically to ensure that their blood type was compatible with the recipients blood type, and the tissue antigens were sufficiently close to the recipients antigens. The recipients were given Cyclosporin, potent immunosuppressive or anti-rejection drug, which had a rather alarming list of side-effects.
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