The Philippines today announced a ban on kidney transplants involving overseas patients in an effort to stamp out the murky organ trade, which preys on some of the country’s most vulnerable and impoverished people.The thriving “transplant tourism” trade made the Philippines one of the world’s cheapest places for wealthy foreign patients seeking to buy a new kidney.Organ sales are illegal in the Philippines. But in each of the past few years, as many as 500 foreign patients, including Britons, received kidney transplants, the vast majority of them from people who were not relatives. The Philippines became a transplant “hotspot” after China and Pakistan, among the world’s largest sources of donated kidneys, adopted tough measures to curb organ sales.Source: guardian.co.uk; full article here>>.
