Trafficking in transplants

2003-07-04 11:07

Bratislava - A Czech doctor has been arrested at a Slovakian customs checkpoint with an ice-box full of body parts, lifting the veil on a transplant surgery traffic with western Europe, Slovakian police said on Thursday.

The 57-year-old physician, employed by a hospital in the Slovakian border town of Skalica, was trying to cross into the Czech republic, a local police spokesperson said.

Customs officials found an ice-box packed with 16 plastic bags full of pericardia (the sac-like coverings of the heart), blood and bone grafts in his car.

A spokesperson for Slovakian customs, Silvia Balazsikova, said the doctor planned to deliver the organs to a western European country in the first case of human organ trafficking ever unveiled in Slovakia.

Another doctor, a 68-year-old surgeon at the same hospital who had taken the body parts from dead patients without any authorisation, was also held for questioning.

"An investigation is under way to determine whether the patients were still alive when the organs were taken," the police spokesperson, Martin Korch, said.

Health Minister Rudolf Zajac warned on Thursday organ traffic could increase when Slovakia joins the European Union next year. With extremely low salaries in the Slovakian health sector, corruption among medics is endemic.

The two men face jail terms of six months to three years. - Sapa-AFP

- SAPA