ISLAMABAD, May 29: The Supreme Court asked the provincial governments on Tuesday to notify in six weeks rules and protocols to prevent violation of Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissue Act of 2010.

A bench comprising Justice Jawwad S. Khwaja and Justice Khilji Arif Hussain was hearing a petition filed by human rights activists, social workers, Islamic scholars, educationists, journalists and medical practitioners, led by Asma Jehangir, former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), seeking a directive for devising rules and protocols to prevent violation of the act.

The court observed that since the health department had been devolved to provinces after the 18th Amendment, the provincial governments should frame the rules under Section 17 of the act.

The petition, filed by Advocate Muneer A. Malik, requested the court to make available the assistance of an effective and specialised investigative agency, like the Federal Investigation Agency, to the Human Organ Transplantation Authority for probing violations of the act.

It said the modus operandi of the hospitals and doctors violating the law was very sophisticated and the commercial transplants frequently involved foreigners.

Apart from Ms Jehangir, prominent names behind the joint petition are Zohra Yousuf, chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), Edhi Foundation’s chairman Maulana Abdul Sattar Edhi, Professor of Urology Dr Anwer Naqvi, Sindh Education Foundation’s president Prof Anita Ghulam Ali, columnist Ardeshir Cowasjee, journalist Zubeida Mustafa, Support Trust’s chief Syed Mohammad Shabbar Zaidi, Sheikh Zaid Islamic Research Centre’s Director Dr Noor Ahmed Shahtaz, Associate Prof Dr Aamir Jafarey, consultant nephrologist Dr Tufail Mohammad and Dr Mirza Naqi Zafar, a professor of pathology.

The court was told that the federal government had prepared the rules and Law Secretary Yasmeen Abbasey was vetting them.

Punjab’s Additional Advocate General Jawad Hassan said the act was still a federal law and the rules couldn’t be framed until it was adopted by the provincial assembly.

But the court ordered the provincial governments to adopt the rules as drafted by the petitioners and notify them within six weeks.

According to the petitioners, Pakistan emerged as the world’s largest bazaar for illegal trade in human organs after 1994 and in the absence of any effective law, some 2,500 kidney transplants were performed by 2007.

It was estimated that 80 per cent of such transplants were between unrelated living donors and recipients where the former was paid for the donation of his/her kidney. Around 1,500 of the transplants were performed for the benefit of foreign patients. Rich patients from Europe, India and the Middle East would visit Pakistan and pay anywhere between $10,000 to $30,000 for a kidney transplant that included the purchase of a kidney from a living donor. Invariably, such commercial donors were destitute and uneducated lured into selling their organs by exploitative middlemen working hand in glove with unscrupulous hospitals and medical practitioners.