By IRNA
Berlin : German prosecutors are investigating whether a university hospital in the northern city of Kiel had illegally carried out donated liver transplantations on Saudi patients, the online Netzeitung newspaper said Saturday.
According to the report, the donated livers were supposed to be transplanted only in exceptional cases on waiting list patients who are living outside Europe.
However, the transplantations were carried out on private Saudi patients whose name was either not or further down on the waiting list.
A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in Kiel said the probe is focusing on whether German transplantation laws had been violated.
Meanwhile, German television reported that bribery was also involved in the alleged transplantation scandal.
The Saudi patients were initially supposed to receive only parts of a liver of a family member and not liver organs of brain-dead patients.
The Kiel University Hospital carried out 30 liver transplantations in 2006.
Many cash-strapped German hospitals and medical clinics have welcomed affluent Arab patients as a new flourishing source of revenue in recent years.