ILLEGAL KIDNEY HARVEST NEVER OCCURRED IN PNG

By Vonu LIBITINO, Port Moresby

A kidney special or nephrologist at the Port Moresby General Hospital, confirmed that there have been no recorded instances of illegal kidney harvesting in Papua New Guinea.

Dr. Steven Bogosia, Papua New Guinea’s only leading nephrologist, made this statement, in response to a screenshot of a message, that is being shared on social media, in which the sender discussed harvesting kidneys from school children for money.

“You can’t just go and harvest kidneys from people, because that would mean killing and stealing and these are all illegal activities.

There are laws in place that [prohibit] this from happening and if you are found doing this, you will be arrested and charged,” Dr Bogosia said, to dispel rumors of illegal kidney harvest.

The kidney doctor explained the procedure of kidney donor in Papua New Guinea (PNG).

“When a patient has kidney failure due to diabetes and requires a kidney donor for transplant, we usually ask the patient’s family member to be the donor.

The patient and relative (donor), will then have to travel together, to places like Manila, to get the kidney transplant done.

And we only do the transplant, when both [parties] have agreed.

We cannot force someone to [donate] their kidney and the patient should not have to pay for a kidney as that would be illegal,” Dr Bogosia said.

He did admit that there is illegal kidney harvesting happening elsewhere in the world however, this has never happened in PNG.

We did have similar rumors of this kind of thing in the past, but I have never seen this happen in the wards in the hospital or heard of a report of this in PNG,” Dr Bogosia reiterated.