KUALA LUMPUR: While the country welcomes tourists of all hues, it does not want to attract "transplant tourists".
Director-General of Health Tan Sri Dr Mohd Ismail Merican said yesterday: "We are against organ trafficking, transplant tourism and transplant commercialism."
Director-General of Health Tan Sri Dr Mohd Ismail Merican. (Photo:NST)
He fears that what is happening in some countries, where human trafficking is carried out to source for organs, may occur here.
He does not want the vulnerable and poor to be made to sell their organs.
He warned that commercialisation of organ, tissue and cell, and any act that might indirectly promote or lead to commercial transaction of organs, was prohibited.
"Although it has not been reported in Malaysia, we are aware that it is happening in this region. We are against it," he said at the first ever three-day World Health Organisation regional meeting on Guiding Principles on Human Organ Transplantation here.
The meeting is jointly organised by the WHO and Malaysian Society of Transplantation and supported by the Health Ministry.
Dr Ismail said the trading of organs was due to a persistent shortage.
The ministry, he said, was against vulnerable individuals or groups such as illiterate and impoverished people, illegal immigrants, prisoners and political or economic refugees being made living donors.
"We know that some countries are struggling to attain self-sufficiency in the availability of organs for transplantation. It is in this unfortunate situation that unethical market practices such as transplant tourism and human trafficking are rearing their ugly heads."
He added there was a need to "decapitate these ugly heads" and restore order and accountability to the practice of organ transplant and that was the reason WHO had prepared the revised guiding principles on human organ transplantation.
Worldwide, he said, there were attempts to regulate the unbridled commercialisation with various strategies, proposals and mechanisms to "introduce morals into the market". However, the ingenuity of regulated "organ entrepreneurs" knew no bounds, said Dr Ismail.
In Malaysia, approved transplant services started in the 1970s with cornea transplant.
The first "solid organ" transplant -- that of a kidney -- was performed in Kuala Lumpur Hospital in 1975.
"We are keen to ensure that our transplant services are at par with the best in the world and we are making every effort to ensure that this becomes a reality in the near future," Dr Ismail said.
Between 1975 and last year, 1,264 kidney transplants were performed. Another 11,249 patients are waiting for kidney transplants.
Eighty-six liver transplants have been carried out since 1993 and 29 people are on the waiting list.
Twenty heart transplants have been performed since 1997 and six are waiting for hearts, while four lung transplants have been done since 2005 with nine on the waiting list.
"We need more organs," he said, adding that till March, 126,403 people had pledged their organs.
