ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the federal government as well as the four provincial governments why Pakistan was still being bracketed with countries that allowed illegal transplantation of organs.

A two-judge Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali ordered federal Health Secretary Mohammad Ayub Sheikh as well as officials of the provincial governments to furnish within two weeks their replies to allegations levelled in a letter written by Dr S. Adibul Hasan Rizvi, the director of the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT). The court heard the matter on a suo motu notice.

In his May 10 letter, Dr Rizvi invited the attention of chief justice towards the bad reputation Pakistan was getting due to illegal transplantation of organs in the country.

Attached to the letter were emails sent from Canada by Dr Francis Delmonico, the executive director of the Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group (DICG) — an international organisation that works under the World Health Organisation to protect the poor and vulnerable from “transplant tourism” and to address the wider problem of trafficking of human organs and tissues.

Dr Rizvi is a member of the DICG because Pakistan is a signatory to the declaration.

In one of his emails, Dr Delmonico alleged that transplantation of kidney was illegally being carried out at the Al Sayed Hospital, Rawalpindi, where condition of the recipient of the transplanted organ was often critical.

Citing an example, he said a 60-year-old woman from Vancouver, Canada, who was suffering from polycystic kidney disease, underwent transplantation at the hospital on April 2. But after returning home she fell seriously sick.

There was no medical record accompanying the patient as she returned to Vancouver, the email said and added: “Nevertheless, it seems that she had every expectation that she could buy a kidney in Rawalpindi because that was the track record for Rawalpindi. Everybody knows it, including the Pakistani government.”

Attached to Dr Rizvi’s letter was also an email sent by Dr Jeremy Chapman — a steering committee member of the DICG from Australia and former president of the International Transplantation Society.

In his email, Dr Chapman wrote about a young investment banker who was being seen by a private nephrologist not directly attached to his unit. The banker later underwent transplantation in Gujrat city.

This contact helped the recipient of the organ get “Rehman” tablets from Pakistan at $900 a month to keep him off dialysis. Apparently, the email said, the recipient was operated upon in a makeshift “house/hospital/clinic” with an epidural anaesthetic.

The donor was a 26-year-old woman who was paid $15,000 and apparently had to be admitted to the intensive care unit with major complications. The doctor who performed the operation was paid $100,000.

In his letter, Dr Rizvi regretted that in both the cases the lives of the donors as well as recipients were at risk, while the so-called doctors had made a bonanza.

“Because of the gravity of the situation and the fact that this is bringing a very bad name to the country, we would humbly request you [chief justice] to use your good offices in bringing about an end to the menace of kidney sale in Pakistan,” the letter said.

The sale of kidney was forbidden under the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act, 2010 and carried a heavy penalty and imprisonment, Dr Rizvi added.

During the proceedings on Thursday, Babar Awan, who was representing Al Sayed Hospital, accused the government of harassing the hospital’s staff “under the garb of investigations”.

If there was an ambiguity in the law, the counsel argued, it should be improved but the hospital staff should never be harassed.

At this, Chief Justice Jamali observed that the court had not issued any direction to police in the matter. All that the bench wanted, he said, was that Pakistan should not be among the countries where organ transplantation was carried out illegally.

In a preliminary report, the Punjab government said Al Sayed Hospital was a recognised hospital and was registered with the Punjab Human Organ Transplant Authority.

The hospital was granted recognition on May 15 this year, the statement said, adding that any transplantation taking place before May 20 should be considered illegal.

Al Sayed Hospital, Rawalpindi, is the same facility whose chief executive officer, retired Col Mukhtar Hamid Shah, gave an undertaking to a bench headed by then chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry on July 9, 2009, that transplantation of human organs in violation of any law or ordinance in force would not take place there.

Published in Dawn, August 5th, 2016