Baghdad (AsiaNews) Need a kidney? Come to Iraq if you can afford the US$ 30,000 price tag. Many Algerians are doing just that thanks to a local criminal ring that is bringing patients from the North African country to Iraq through Jordan for a kidney transplant, this according to Algerian daily La Nouvelle République. The paper quotes a member of the Algerian-based Association d'aide aux insuffisants rénaux (Kidney Patients Support Association) who says that it is possible to buy a kidney for an adult or a child for US$ 30-40,000.
According to the patients support group the journey of hope becomes a death march in 90 per cent of the cases since nine out of every ten patients die after the operation because of incompatibility between organ donor and recipient as well as unchecked contagious diseases such tuberculosis, viral hepatitis, cancer or AIDS.
In Algeria 5,000 people are waiting for a kidney transplant.
AsiaNews contacted Caritas Iraq in Amman, Jordan but no one in the Catholic relief agency was aware of this kind of trafficking. One of its members did say though that "any time and any where there is some kind of emergency, such deeds [i.e. organ trafficking] become tragically commonplace". (LF)