World | Philippines
Filipino children sell kidneys to help parents
Some 250 Filipinos, two of them below 18, have sold one of their kidneys to recruiters who supply them to patients who need transplants, a local paper has said.
- By Barbara Mae Dacanay, Bureau Chief
- Published: 22:56 June 23, 2009
Manila: Some 250 Filipinos, two of them below 18, have sold one of their kidneys to recruiters who supply them to patients who need transplants, a local paper has said.
"We were able to identify 250 people who sold their kidneys and two of them were below 18," Amihan Abueva, of End Child Prostitution, Pornography, and Trafficking (ECPAT), a non-government organisation, told the Star.
"Someone recruited them and they were paid 112,000 pesos (Dh8,493) each for their kidneys," Abueva said, adding that forcing or persuading Filipino children to sell their kidneys is the newest form of child exploitation in the country today.
ECPAT's study did not indicate if the two young kidney donors were assisted by their parents in the sale of their organs.
Syndicates are now using online marketing, through the internet, where they offer organs to prospective foreign and local buyers, said Dr Benita Padilla of the National Kidney and Transplant Institute.
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