Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Iraq, where the poor and hungry sell their kidneys to buy food...

Iraq, which has the world's third-biggest oil reserves, is making billions of dollars in oil exerts thanks to record-setting prices. Still, many of its citizens sell parts of their own bodies just to survive.

"I couldn’t see my children crying for food and I can not get them at even bread," Ali Hassnawi, a 34-year-old Baghdad resident, told IslamOnline.net.

"One day a friend of mine told me he had sold his kidney and I decided to do the same," he recalled.

"I got $1,500 dollars for it, two months later my wife got a better payment for hers. She got $3,000 because the man who bought it was nearly dying."

Abject poverty in oil-rich Iraq has driven many like Hassnawi and his wife to a growing organs black market, where kidney is the most sought-after.

Prices vary between $500 to $5,000 dollars depending on and urgent the kidney is needed.

According to the Health Ministry, renal disease is common in the country and more than 7,000 Iraqis currently need urgent kidney transplants.

"The lives of many Iraqis are threatened because haemodialysis machine are old and many aren’t working properly," stressed Taha Abdel-Rahman, a ministry media officer.

"We have a long list of patients requesting kidneys and in many times when they can get the organ, they are already dead." More...

See also: If you're an albino in Tanzania, run for your life...
And this: 'Kidney racket' exposed in India

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