Blood money: How our low rate of organ donations is driving people to risk their lives on the black market

Australia, we’ve got a problem — more people need an organ transplant than there are organs available. It’s driving people to risk their lives to buy an organ on the black market.

Australia’s broken organ donation system is fuelling a ghastly black market trade, where kidneys can cost up to $250,000. Ragavan, a Chennai kidney broker, has a list of hundreds of Indians who want to sell their kidneys to foreigners, including Australians. (Pic: News Corp Australia/Gary Ramage)

Australia, we’ve got a problem.

More people need an organ transplant than there are organs available and it’s driving people to risk their lives to buy an organ on the black market.

This week we’ve lifted the lid on an ugly trade that is seeing poor people in places like India, Sri Lanka and the Philippines sell their kidneys for as little as $800.

Selling an organ doesn’t get them out of debt but it helps enrich doctors involved in the illegal organ trade who are making up to $250,000 out of each transplant.

Sarah received a kidney illegally from China and is now living a healthy life back in Australia. (Pic: News Corp Australia/Gary Ramage)

Today we’ve exposed how some refugees are selling their kidneys to get the money for a passage to Australia or Europe.

And we’ve revealed how there is evidence terror group Islamic State is now involved in the trade.

There have been great improvements in Australia’s organ donation rate since reforms were introduced in 2009.

The number of deceased organ donors has risen by 76 per cent and the number of transplant recipients has risen from 799 to 1,241.

This is a credit to an army of hardworking doctors, a new national system and changes that have seen more staff trained to ask families to donate the organs of a loved one in their time of grief.

However, in 2014 Australia’s organ donation rate ranked us 22nd in the world and our donation rate is just half that of world leader Spain.

Some Australians are still dying waiting for an organ transplant and earlier this year at least one Australian went overseas to buy an organ on the black market.

As a country that is built around the legend of looking after our mates we should be able to do better than this.

Some of us might think, wrongly, that registering to donate an organ is still tied to renewing your driver’s licence.

Most of us probably would like to register but forget to do it in the hurly burly of our busy lives.

In the internet age registering could not be easier, you can do it online and you should do it as soon as you finish reading this by going to donatelife.gov.au

There’s just one more step — tell your friends and family you want to donate an organ, if they know you want to do this it makes it easier to say yes when a doctor asks them in their time of grief.