Fourteen European countries, including Poland, signed a convention against trafficking in human organs on Wednesday to counteract this practice, which generates more than one billion euros in illegal profits annually, the Council of Europe said in a press release.
This convention is the first international legal document of this type to regulate organ procurement and transplantation.
Trafficking in human organs is one of the most human-exploiting activities, emphasized the Secretary General of RE Thorbjoern Jagland on the first day of the international conference on the trafficking of human organs, organized in Santiago de Compostella in the north of Spain.
The so-called organ donors are the poor, the weak, orphans, and the uneducated. These people and the people who receive their organs are exposed to operations that do not have any medical guarantees, stressed Jagland, calling for the ratification of the convention.
It stipulates that countries will criminalize organ donation without expressly expressing the will of the donor – dead or alive – or where it has benefited the donor or a third party.
At the same time, signatory states will be able to decide for themselves whether to hold donors accountable and treat them as complicit.
The Convention provides for compensation for victims, their protection and the introduction of preventive measures aimed at ensuring equal access to transplants. The convention also allows the police in different countries to exchange information more easily.
Among the first 14 signatories of the convention, apart from Poland, there are the following countries: Albania, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Greece, Spain, Luxembourg, Moldova, Norway, Portugal, Great Britain, Italy, Turkey.
The convention is open for signature by 47 member states of the CoE and non-member states. For it to enter into force, it must be ratified by at least five countries – reports the AFP agency.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), nearly 10 illegal transplants are performed worldwide every year. Trafficking in human organs is one of the ten activities of organized crime groups that brings the most profits – around EUR 1,3 billion per year – said the secretary general of the CoE.
According to the EC data, despite the large increase in the number of transplants in recent years, in 2012 over 68 thousand. people in Europe were waiting for a kidney transplant, and every day 12 people on the transplant waiting list die due to a lack of organs. (PAP)