After years of debate Egypt has passed an organ transplant law to regulate a flourishing black market in organs. The new law went into effect in June. It bans payment for human organs and restricts donations from live donors to family members of the fourth degree. In effect, foreigners are banned from receiving transplants. Removing organs without government permission will be treated as first-degree murder, and transplant procedures for the poor will be funded by the state. “This law will bring the organ trade in Egypt down to a minimum,” says assistant Health minister Abdel Hamid Abaza. “With a law like this, patients will not need to seek organs in an illegal manner.”

Egypt is one of the last countries in the Arab world to enact organ-transplant legislation. In 2010 the World Health Organization described it as one of the world’s “hotspots” for organ trafficking. Sherine Hamdy, of Brown University, said that because transplants have been in a legal twilight zone, people who were victimised could not turn to the law.

“A lot of times you have people coming to police claiming their organs were stolen,” she said. “Often what happened was that people were promised larger sums of money than they were delivered or that the operation was much less risky than it (ultimately) was. Not wanting to incriminate themselves as having sold their organ, they would claim their organs were stolen. But prosecutors hadn’t yet been able to do anything because of the absence of a law.” ~ Egyptian Gazette, Jul 8;  Africa Review, July 5