China Busts Organ Trafficking Ring

A Chinese court has sent 16 people, including two surgeons, to jail after they were found guilty of trafficking human organs.

Xinhua news agency reported on 31 December that the group which included a doctor, a nurse and an anaesthesiologist, was running a vast and an intricate racket of illegal kidney trade. According to the court in the city of Jinan, in the eastern province of Shandong, the miscreants used to search online for people who are willing to donate their kidney. 

Once a patient is found who is ready for the transplantation, he or she was asked for an amount of 400,000 to 600,000 renminbi (US$57,620 to 86,430) for the entire procedure. However, after the transplantation was carried out in secrecy in Feicheng city, the donor was only given a mere amount of 40,000 renminbi.

Despite China issuing its first regulations on human organ transplants as early as in 2007, incidents of organ trafficking is quite common in the Asian giant, according to Agence Frace-Presse. It was also reported that the tradition of a to be buried without any kind of mutilation has triggered off a drastic shortage of organs which can be used again. Several right groups said that organs of executed convicts are used, often without taking the family's consent for such transplantations.