Organ Trafficking: How Germans Buy New Kidneys in Kenya
www.spiegel.de
Germans in need of new kidneys are heading to Kenya to buy one. The donors are frequently suffering from bitter poverty. Behind the scheme is an Israeli whom the authorities have been after for years.

DER SPIEGEL, German public broadcaster ZDF and Deutsche Well teamed up over the course of several months to follow the organ trail. From Germany and Poland via Israel to the clinic in Eldoret, Kenya, that is currently in the center of an international and seemingly criminal kidney trade. The transactions and transplants link patients in Germany with donors in Caucasus nations like Azerbaijan. And it links prosperous Somalians with young Kenyans who are talked into earning a quick 2,000 to 5,000 euros for one of their kidneys, while patients in the West pay up to 200,000 euros to the organ traders – preferably in cash.

  • randomname@scribe.disroot.orgEnglish
    4·
    11 hours ago

    This is a long-standing problem and by far not only related to this Kenya case. There is even a case that EU funds may have unintentionally supported forced organ harvesting:

    In 2021, a group of UN Special Rapporteurs and human rights experts issued a joint correspondence to the Chinese Government […] regarding credible allegations of forced organ harvesting in China. The following year, [the European] Parliament adopted a resolution […] also raising concern over forced organ harvesting in China and called on ‘the relevant institutions in the Member States to evaluate and revisit the terms of their collaborations with Chinese institutions on transplant medicine, research and training’.

    This, coupled with the launch of ‘New Horizon’ – an EU-China transplant training programme, whose honoured guest, Professor Shusen Zheng, is a Chinese transplant surgeon accused of involvement in forced organ harvesting […] – has raised concerns over whether this allocation of funding upholds EU values.

    The issue is not yet cleared afaik.