Inept handling of the farm crisis by state government is forcing farmers to fall prey to kidney rackets of the corporate hospitals in the drought-hit Palnadu region. Notwithstanding the stringent rules and laws, the agents of corporate hospitals continue to trap the debt-ridden farmers in return for clearing their loans.
Under pressure from money lenders, farmers were virtually caught between the devil and deep sea – either to commit suicide or sell a kidney.
The ghost of kidney racket mafia has returned to Palnadu almost after a decade and a half. According to unconfirmed reports, about 30-40 farmers of Rentachintala, Durgi, Dachepalli, Gurazala, Macherla, Veldurthi mandals have fallen prey to the offers of the agents of corporate hospitals in the last one year.
The agents of the corporate hospitals are now well-versed with the laws and are preparing lengthy documents before the ‘donation’ the vital organ. As a result, the entire process of kidney selling has become just organ donation as per the law.
Ironically, the amendments made to the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act (THOTA), is believed to have come in handy for the agents. The stringent rules in the Thota, 1994, were relaxed to help a large number of patients waiting for renal transplantation.
According to medical experts, about two lakh people are diagnosed with renal failure every year and for most, the only cure is a kidney transplant. As per law, there are three degrees of donors.
The immediate family members of the recipient are called first degree donors and for transplantation of kidney from these members, prior permission is not required from the government. Members from immediate next family - cousins, in-laws, uncle and aunt, are part of second degree donors and friends are called third degree donors.
All these transplantations have to be routed through a government appointed committee and surgery can be carried out only after getting the requisite permissions from the authorities. While the local tehsildar and police have to certify about the ‘relationship’ between the donor and recipient, a multi-member district-level committee has to clear the application for donation of organ.
With donation from outside the family also having been legalised, it has become easy for agents of the kidney rackets to influence both the donors and field level officers. “As per the law, it is legal to transplant the organs from unrelated families provided the request is cleared by the medical board and it is not a commercial transaction,” said senior nephrologist, Chinta Venkata Ramakrishna.
According to sources, the agents of corporate hospitals are spending a lot of money to get their applications cleared from the tehsildars and the police to be sent to the medical board.
Two farmers, Baram Venkat Reddy, Bakkina Edukondalu of Rentachintala village, both 30 years old, reportedly sold their kidneys as they reportedly incurred about Rs.10-15 lakh loss in chilli cultivation in the last two years. “On paper, it looks like everything is legal. We are probing deep into the cases to find out whether there is a commercial angle,” SP (rural) J Satyanarayana told HNN. He said cases would be booked against anyone found guilty in the issue. While agents are reportedly promising a payment of Rs.6-8 lakh per kidney, they were reportedly paying just Rs 3-4 lakh after the surgery in the guise of spending for clearances.
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