Cheapest black market kidneys are from Philippines
Filipinos who sell their kidneys on the black market are getting paid the lowest amount in the world, according to a new report.
“The living non-related donors that donate their kidneys to foreigners and rich Filipinos are the poor, vulnerable and the marginalized … and we have the mandate to protect them,” said Cabral.Abueva said that in the Philippines, kidney vendors get a measly $1,500 or roughly P125,000 — a price 20 times cheaper than those in the United States.
The asking price in the US starts at $30,000 while kidney vendors get as much as $10,000 to $20,000 in Israel; $7,500 in Turkey, $6,000 in Brazil and $2,700 in Moldova and Romania, said Abueva.
The figures she disclosed during the press briefing was gathered from a recent study conducted by Nancy Scheper-Hughes, a medical anthropology professor at the University of California, Berkeley and the director of Organs Watch, a center that documents the global traffic in organs.
Abueva added that many foreign countries, particularly Saudi Arabia and Japan, send their patients suffering renal failure to the Philippines to avail of these cheap kidneys.
“This is a criminal financial transaction,” she noted.
Among the top hospitals identified to have performed kidney transplants on foreign clients were St. Luke’s Medical Center, Capitol Medical Center, the National Kidney and Transplant Institute, Potenciano Medical Center and the Far Eastern University Hospital.
Learn more about Organ Trafficking here.
