Philippines: A Kidney Donor Hotspot

Statistics show that in the year 2006, there were 436 kidney transplants from living Filipinos to unrelated foreigners and 36 transplants from deceased donors.

That’s quite a number. But if you get to earn at least 3,000 dollars per kidney, you’d be happy to donate a part of your body to someone else who needs it more. Anyway, you still have another one that will still keep you alive and healthy. That’s exactly what poor uneducated Filipinos are thinking.

With the prices of commodities rising every time, the minimum paying jobs can’t even provide most of the basic necessities of a Filipino so when an opportunity comes to earn a lot for a single organ, Filipinos would pounce on it right away. This is a promise that they will live comfortable for a year or so and have the capital to start a small business.

But all these are about to end as the health authorities in the Philippines will ban kidney transplants from Filipinos to foreign patients who aren’t blood relatives. This is their action to reduce the increasing number of human organ trafficking. The good side of this ban is that it allows donors from living relatives and from deceased donors.

With the Roman Catholic Church and the Philippines Society of Nephrologists working hard against this, human organ trafficking could well be stopped altogether. Let’s just hope that everything will go for the best for everyone.

Popularity: 7% [?]