After years of debate Egypt has passed an organ transplant law to regulate a flourishing black market in organs.
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

Egypt cracks down on illegal organ trafficking
Jared Yee
organ trafficking

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