Migrants lured by sex into Egypt’s backstreet kidney trade, says report | Reuters
▻http://www.reuters.com/article/us-egypt-migrants-organs-idUSKCN1181MP
On vit une époque formidable... (via The Arabist).
Brokers in Egypt’s underground trade in human body parts use prostitutes to tempt migrants to sell their kidneys as hospitals turn a blind eye to illicit dealing in donated organs for transplants, a report says.
Undocumented African migrants arriving in Cairo, desperate for cash, told the British Journal of Criminology that sex workers were offered as a “sweetener” before or after removal of their organs.
“(One pimp) used the services of sex workers as leverage when negotiating fees with both sellers and buyers,” the report said. “A night with a sex worker was offered as an extra inducement to sell.”
Organ purchase is banned in Egypt, though the country is a common destination for transplant tourism, along with India, Pakistan and Russia, according to separate research by Erasmus MC University Hospital Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
In April, images published on social media showed the badly scarred bodies of Somali migrants on an Egyptian beach, suggesting they had had organs removed.
In July, a British newspaper reported that African migrants were being killed for their organs in Egypt - a common transit country for migrants - if they could not afford to pay off their people smugglers.
“The Egyptians come equipped to remove the organ and transport it in insulated bags,” people smuggler Nouredin Atta was quoted by Britain’s Times newspaper as telling investigators after his arrest.
The picture of organ trading in Egypt extends beyond the criminal underworld, with mainstream hospitals conducting transplants using kidneys procured through backstreet deals, according to Sean Columb, the report’s author.
Columb, a law lecturer at Liverpool University in Britain, spent weeks in the Egyptian capital interviewing brokers and donors, mostly from Sudan.
Nobody from Egypt’s Health Ministry was immediately available to comment on his findings.
While the buying of kidneys is banned in Egypt, it is not illegal to pay for a transplant procedure, Columb’s report said, with some recipients paying up to $100,000 for a new organ.
Little data is available on the amount donors receive in Cairo, but one of the 13 sellers Columb spoke to said he was paid 40,000 Egyptian pounds ($4,500) for his kidney.
Deals were usually struck in a public place, such as a cafe, in the company of a broker and representative of a registered transplant laboratory, the report said.
Egypt, at a crossroads between the Middle East, north Africa and the Mediterranean, has become a major transit hub for thousands of migrants and refugees seeking to enter Europe.
Around one in 10 - or some 10,000 - migrants and refugees arriving in Italy from the north African coast have sailed from Egypt since the start of the year, the International Organisation for Migration said, with the remainder traveling from Libya.