Regulations aim to curb body-parts trade
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Amid repeated reports about China's black market in body parts, the country's health ministry will revise regulations on organ transplants to require surgeons to gain qualifications to perform the operations.
The ministry will launch an education campaign in hospitals to train doctors toward getting the qualification. It will also start an overhaul of organ transplant businesses, Liu Yong, a ministry official, told yesterday's Xinmin Evening News.
According to the ministry, weaknesses in current regulations and loose supervision contributed to the rampant organ market.
Doctors will not be allowed to perform organ transplant surgeries without the qualification, according to the new regulations. Those who cause medical accidents will be disqualified.
Intensifying the crackdown, a draft amendment to China's Criminal Law has categorized the buying and selling of human organs as a crime. The draft amendment was submitted on Monday to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, for its first read.
Those convicted of illegal trading of human organ -- including organizing, coercing and tricking others into donating, and taking human organs from the deceased without consent -- will be sentenced to at least five years in jail.
China now has the second largest number of organ transplant operations in the world, the report said. Every year, more than 1 million patients are waiting for a kidney transplant and about 300,000 are waiting for a liver. But only1 percent of them get the chance to operate and survive.
The huge gap has given rise to a scary black market where traders deal with people willing to exchange a kidney or part of their liver for money, according to an earlier report.
An alleged organ dealer told a court in May that a human kidney sold for 130,000 yuan (US$19,120) and half of a liver was sold for 40,000 yuan.
A sophisticated ring kept hundreds of willing young donors at their "organ farms," waiting in confined apartments to have their kidney or liver harvested. They were caught only after a disgruntled organ seller informed police about the grisly trade.
