Maggie Azer reports on the growing trade in human organs Sayed Mahmoud Abu Deif, 26, took off his shirt to reveal a long scar on his right side. "I want to see the president," he shouted to the guards in front of the presidential palace, "and show him how they stole my kidney." Abu Deif has been unemployed since losing his kidney two years ago. "I am suffocating from despair, I am close to suicide," he said, before recounting a story which provides a glimpse into the hidden world of Egypt's trade in human organs, a trade that has led some to dub Egypt as the Brazil of the Middle East. It was in 2004 that Abu Deif joined a growing list of victims of what he describes as a mafia run by a well- known surgeon working for the government run Al-Matariya Institute for Kidneys. While drinking tea in a café in the Cairo district of Doqqi he was approached by a man who offered him a job in the United Arab Emirates. Employment, said the man, was conditional on Abu Deif undergoing some health checks. Abu Deif then spent two weeks with eight other men who had been offered jobs. They were housed in an apartment in Bab El-Khalq while waiting for the medical checks, isolated from their families and friends. "There was a school teacher and a holder of a bachelors' degree in commerce among others. We were all together in this apartment waiting for the jobs we had been promised in the Gulf," said Abu Deif. Before going to the Ibn Sina (Avicenna) hospital in Doqqi, Abu Deif met with Mahmoud Zaki, the man he describes as the big boss. He is hazy about the exact date of the theft of his kidney, recalling only the white gown he was given to wear in the hospital, and the high-tech medical equipment with which he was surrounded. "They told me they were testing my heart," he says. The next thing he remembers is waking up in hospital, and a nurse congratulating him on his successful surgery. "I fainted when the nurse told me that they had removed my kidney. Then when I came round I smashed the windows and hit the nurse on her head." Two days after the operation, he was released by the hospital and warned not to return. "They threw me down the hospital stairs. I burst into tears. My side was completely bandaged." When he tracked down the man who had approached him with the job offer, Abu Deif was given LE4,000 for post-surgery treatment. He threatened to present the papers he had signed to the police, only to discover that the papers turned out to be an IOU. Abu Deif has since filed two lawsuits but after two years the prosecutor has yet to set a date for court proceedings. "Mahmoud [Zaki] can bribe a whole country," says Abu Deif. "I lost everything. I went to the presidential palace because they say the president is the father of all Egyptians." Contacted by phone, Zaki denied any relation with Abu Deif. "They are blackmailing me. I have nothing to do with them." Abdallah Mustafa, Abou Deif's lawyer, says the trade in human organs is "mushrooming," and it is almost impossible for victims to receive compensation. "These individuals face what amounts to a mafia," he says. "They are ruthless, and leave no traces of their crimes. All hospital records are destroyed." According to doctors and brokers, human kidneys fetch between LE27,000 to LE40,000. There is no legislation that criminalises the theft or selling of human organs. Several draft laws proposed over the past decade have done no more than gather dust, while Egypt's Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, issued a fatwa permitting the transplant of organs while prohibiting their sale. The Doctors' Syndicate officially prohibits the sale of human organs: under syndicate regulations any members involved in the trade face expulsion, and clinics can be closed if it is shown they have acted to facilitate the trade. The rules are clear, says Abdel-Qader Hegazy, deputy head of the Doctors' Syndicate. Donations of body organs are permitted between fourth degree relatives, from one Egyptian to another, and from a foreigner to a person of the same nationality. The exchange of body organs is not allowed between different nationalities. Hospitals that conduct transplants are required to first obtain permission from the syndicate. Yet despite the precautions, it is all too easy to find those willing to fake the necessary papers, and hospitals that will open their operating rooms to unlicenced transplant operations. "Sadly, the business is booming," says Hegazy. And Abu Deif is neither the first, nor the last, victim of this unscrupulous trade.
