THE number of human organ trafficking crime has risen with increasingly sophisticated tricks and techniques, triggered by high demand and low rate of donation from brain dead donors, according to local authorities.
According to Senior Colonel Dinh Van Trinh, Deputy Head of Division 5, Criminal Police Department under the Ministry of Public Security, the criminals are organised with each individual in charge of different tasks in the procedures, including approaching, getting to know buyers and sellers, negotiating, faking the documents, in order to legalise their criminal acts in the name of humanitarian, not-for-profit purpose.
They approach people who want to buy body organs at hospitals or look for buyers and sellers via social network platforms, then set the prices and legalise their acts with fake documents in order to send the buyers/sellers to hospitals to have organs removed and transplanted, Trinh said at a conference on organ donation registration and the prevention of organ and tissue trafficking.
“Many brokers had been victims of this type of crime before and are aware of the high demand and profits. They connected with other individuals to develop a ring,” Trinh said.
“Benefits mostly go to brokers. They charge people in need of kidney VND800 million to one billion (RM147,368-RM183,992) a case but the seller gets VND200 million to 250 million (RM36,829-RM46,052) only. Sellers do not want to reveal their identity, making it hard to identify brokers.”
According to Deputy Minister Tran Van Thuan after more than 15 years of implementation, many provisions of the law on donation, removal and transplantation of human tissues and organs and the donation of cadavers have revealed shortcomings.
Many are no longer consistent with practice, including regulations on registration of donations and the issue of prevention and combat of human tissue and organ trafficking.
He noted that the demand for tissue and organ transplants was huge with tens of thousands in need of kidney and/or liver transplants and thousands in need of transplantation of other organs and tissues.
“More than 90% of donated organs transplanted are from living donors. There have been illegal acts involved in the trafficking and brokering of trafficking of organs and tissues, leaving serious social consequences. It is imperative to improve the legal frameworks and have solutions to prevent and combat the trafficking of organs and tissues,” he said.
He suggested both online and offline registration to make it more convenient for potential donors.
As part of the efforts to combat organ trafficking, he said it was important to strengthen communication work to raise public awareness of the meaning of organ donation while having a mechanism to avoid direct contact between the donor and organ recipient to ensure transparency in an organ donation activity. — Vietnam News/ANN