A mother from Tamil Nadu puts her kidney on sale just for the sake of her son’s higher education.
On 25th May a surgeon in Chennai receives a mail as written “I am a 37-year-old married woman. “I want to sell my kidney. I have no money for my son’s studies and I have family problems. So can you help me sir? It’s very urgent. My blood group is B positive”.
Education is not that much easy and convenient for poor people but it doesn’t mean that you need to sell your body parts for all such needs. It’s time to focus on those serious topics which are just like rust on metals, one of it is organ trafficking.
Anyone caught buying or selling organs can be jailed for up to seven years, with or without a fine of Rs 20,000, according to the Transplant of Human Organs Act and Rules, 1994.
“Higher education is so expensive and parents get desperate. These are people who are not illiterate or very poor. Earlier most people who offered to sell organs (through middlemen) were below poverty line, trying to repay loans or marry off their daughters, “he said.
But desperation, more than ignorance, is driving many people to break the law, especially during the college admission season.
Dr Sunil Shroff, who heads an NGO ‘MOHAN Foundation’ that campaigns for cadaver donations, says the emails are a new trend. They leave phone numbers and expect a call.
These mails, doctors say, will subside once the college admissions are over, but people may continue to email them for other reasons.
Some transplant surgeons say they are frightened to think what would happen if these people contact organ brokers. Officials at the state transplant registry say that they have been receiving at least one email every two days regarding organ sale.