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China in Uproar Over Organ Transplants to Foreigners

Wealthy Japanese got organs ahead of needy Chinese

By Tom Glaister
ConsumerAffairs.com

February 19, 2009

Medical Tourism • Medicine Abroad: Cheap But At What Cost? • China in Uproar Over Organ Transplants to Foreigners • Medical Tourism Impacting U.S. Health Care • "Medical Vacations" - A Good Idea? --- • More About Organ Transplants • More Health News ...

China has banned all organ transplants for foreigners while it investigates reports that 17 Japanese tourists received illegal kidney and liver transplants while 1.5 million Chinese languished on waiting lists.

Japan's Kyoto News reported that the 17 Japanese patients each spent about $87,000 for the operations at an unidentified hospital in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province. Most of the patients were aged between 50 and 65, and received kidney or liver transplants, the report said.

Sentiment against so-called "medical tourists" is rising in some countries that have made a business out of providing transplants and other surgeries to wealthy foreigners while, in many cases, their own citizens make do with substandard care.

There are only about 10,000 donors for the more than 1 million Chinese who need transplants annually, Deputy Minister Huang Jiefu said on the Health Ministry's Web site. The ban has been in effect for more than a year but did not receive widespread attention until the Japanese controversy arose.

Huang said the government plans to develop a national registry system regulating organ transplants to ensure that organs go to the patients who need them most desperately and are most likely to benefit from them. A similar system has been in operation in the United States for decades.

News agency reports said that most of the organs received by the Japanese probably came from executed Chinese prisoners. Chinese health officials have said in the past that the state only uses prisoners' organs that have been voluntarily donated but it is widely thought that there is a thriving black market in organs in China and other developing nations.

A 2004 investigation by a British newspaper, The Independent, found a vigorous underground trade, especially for well-heeled Japanese patients.

In 2006, a BBC reporter was told that he could arrange a liver transplant in just three weeks.

Affects domestic care

U.S. health officials say that medical tourism is having a negative impact on the American healthcare system. It's estimated that more than 750,000 Americans left the country in 2007 for less expensive medical treatments. The number is projected to grow to six million by 2010, potentially costing the U.S. health care system billions, according to the results of a series of research by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions.

The number of retail clinics in operation has also soared by 220 percent from just 250 clinics in 2006 to more than 800 serving patients by the end of 2007. Both trends suggest that these new innovations are challenging the status quo of the traditional U.S. health care system as consumers seek better care, and greater access at lower costs, the reports found

More: Medicine Abroad: Cheap But At What Cost?

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