TIMES OF INDIA: London-based newspaper ‘The Telegraph’ has stirred up a controversy by alleging the involvement of Apollo Hospital in Delhi in illegal purchase of kidneys from poor people in Myanmar for rich patients of that country.
The daily claims that though paying for organs is illegal in India, a middleman in Myanmar told its reporter that “it’s big business”.
It said the modus operandi involves “elaborate forging of identity documents and staging of ‘family’ photographs to present donors as relatives of would-be patients. Under Indian and Burmese laws, a patient cannot receive an organ from a stranger in normal circumstances”. The report, which names a hospital doctor, alleges that a lot of money changes hands in such illegal transplants.
The newspaper claims that it got scent of the scam from the case of a 58-year-old patient, Daw Soe Soe, who is said to have paid 8 million Myanmar Kyat for a kidney in September 2022. The transplantation was allegedly conducted at the hospital in Delhi.
The donor was a complete stranger for the recipient, claims the report. The Telegraph reporter then posed as a relative of a “sick aunt” who urgently needed a kidney transplant but had no family members to donate the same.
They claimed to have contacted Apollo’s Myanmar office and were told that a stranger would be sourced to donate the kidney.
They were also told by a man, whom they described as an Apollo representative, that 80% of transplantations facilitated in Myanmar were between strangers and only 20% were relatives. “The reporter was then introduced….to a 27-year-old man from the outskirts of Mandalay who said he needed to sell his kidney as his elderly parents, whom he lived with, were ‘not in a good financial condition’,” said the report.
It added that, “the agent, who was present during the conversation, said it would cost roughly £3,000 for the man’s kidney and revealed she had been arranging donations of this kind for the past five years.” One of the agents is then claimed to have told the undercover reporter how they fake the photos that are to be submitted to the board to establish relations between the donor and recipient.
Naming a Myanmarese doctor, who was described as the head of Apollo’s Myanmar operations, the report says he shared with the reporter a document giving a break-up of the expenses linked to the procedure — from the drawing up of a family tree (£315) to flights (£200 each way) and “registration for the medical board” (£160).
The document shows that a patient can expect to pay, in total, up to £17,100 for a kidney transplant. This doesn’t include the money paid to a donor. The report, which names a doctor from the hospital, has alleged that huge amounts of money changes hands to facilitate such illegal transplants.
The hospital has denied the allegations as “false, ill-informed and misleading.”
Following the allegations, Delhi government’s secretary, health and family welfare S B Deepak Kumar told TOI that they were ordering an inquiry.
The director of the National Organ and Tissue Transplantation Organisation (NOTTO), Dr Anil Kumar, said that they and the ministry will look into the allegations.
(Courtesy: Times Of India)
