http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=12229&theme=1&size=A
05/12/2008 13:23
VIETNAM - CHINA
Vietnamese poor sell kidneys to rich Chinese
The organ is sold for about 4,000 dollars. Selling it is a crime in
Vietnam, but everything takes place in neighbouring China. And some
risk death through botched transplants.
Ho Chi Minh City (AsiaNews/ Agencies) - In communist Vietnam, the poor
and desperate are going to China to sell a kidney. And some of the
sellers, like To Cong Luan, find themselves risking their lives.
The state newspaper Viet Nam News recounts that Luan, a 22 year-old
student at the technical-industrial high-school in the capital,
regularly sold blood to the local blood bank. But his girlfriend was
pregnant, and the money was no longer enough. So when he heard that
he could sell a kidney for 70 million dong (about 4,375 dollars) in
China, in December he crossed the border with Guangdong. He returned
to Vietnam two months later, in a vegetative state. While he was
recovering in the Cho Ray hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, the doctors
observed that the numerous incisions on his abdomen demonstrated that
the transplant had been performed incompetently. Because they can do
nothing, his family brought him back home (in the photo), possibly to
die.
But the selling of kidneys is common: Nguyen Thi Thuy, another regular
seller of blood and the owner of a small coffee shop, recounts that
Luan went to China with four other persons: three returned immediately
after the removal of the kidney, and "are in good health and have a
large sum of money in exchange", while in addition to what happened to
Luan, one woman did not even return.
According to Vietnam's health minister, there are between five and six
thousand patients waiting for a kidney transplant in the country, and
in 2007 only 158 transplants could be conducted. The selling of
organs is a crime. But if the seller goes to neighbouring China, it
is very difficult to apply Vietnamese law to the buyer and to the
surgeons.
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