In Iran, unique system allows payments for kidney donors
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — The whirling hum of a dialysis machine could have been the soundtrack to the rest of Zahra Hajikarimi's life but for an unusual program in Iran that allows people to buy a kidney from a living donor.
[...] as black-market organ sales continue in countries like India, the Philippines and Pakistan and many die each year waiting for kidneys, some doctors and other experts have urged America and other nations to consider adopting aspects of Iran's system to save lives.
The AP gained rare access to Iran's program, visiting patients on dialysis waiting for an organ, speaking to a man preparing to sell one of his kidneys and watching surgeons in Tehran perform a transplant.
A person needing a kidney is referred to the Dialysis and Transplant Patients Association, which matches those needing a kidney with a potential healthy adult donor.
The government pays for the surgeries, while the donor gets health coverage for at least a year and reduced rates on health insurance for years after that from government hospitals.
Today, more than 1,480 people receive a kidney transplant from a living donor in Iran each year, about 55 percent of the total of 2,700 transplants annually, according to government figures.
Iran says its system safeguards against black-market organ sales by having the nonprofit groups handle all arrangements and hold money in escrow until after the surgery.
Poverty around the world drives black market kidney sales, a lucrative business the World Health Organization estimated represented at least 5 percent of all transplants in 2005, though it acknowledges that figure is only a guess.
The U.N. health agency's guiding principles on organ transplantation call for banning organ sales, though it allows for "reimbursing reasonable and verifiable expenses," including the loss of income by a living donor.
A series of academic papers and opinion pieces in recent years by doctors and promine