By IANS
New Delhi : The Indian Medical Association (IMA), the apex organisation of Indian doctors, Monday set up a three-member committee to probe the role of some doctors in the organised kidney racket conducted from a house in Gurgaon.
Former IMA secretary general Vinay Aggarwal, managing director and chairman of Pushpanjali Crosslay Hospital, will be heading the committee that would submit its report in 15 days. The other members are S.C.L. Gupta and Dharm Prakash, all doctors.
Expressing anguish over the kidney racket, IMA national president M. Abbas said Monday at a press conference that the doctors indulging in illegal practices should be punished.
“They must be taught a lesson. Their act has demeaned such a revered profession,” he said.
He too blamed the stringent organ transplantation laws as responsible for the current crisis.
In raids conducted over last Thursday and Friday, a surgeon and his four henchmen were arrested from a house in Haryana’s Gurgaon district from where the racket was being run for several years. Four doctors allegedly made over 600 poor people part with their kidneys.
“The committee will probe the role of the doctors involved and how they were carrying out such an inhuman act for so long, and that too under the nose of the local administration. The accountability has to be fixed,” S.N. Mishra, secretary general, IMA, told IANS.
He said he had written to Gurgaon and Haryana chapters of the IMA to find out if the alleged kingpin, Amit Kumar, and his accomplices were members of the association. “So far, their IMA membership has not been established,” he added.
Mishra said the government should relax stringent laws to make organ transplant much easier.
“We need to have an effective mechanism in place to facilitate hassle-free organ transplant, and thereby check illegal transplants,” Mishra said.
“The transplantation of Human Organs Act, 1994, should be made more lenient, and donor and recipient friendly. At present, the spouse, parents, brother and sister can donate, and only in special circumstances can other close relatives donate their organ,” Abbas said.
“We at IMA favour a more liberal approach so that more willing members are able to donate their organs. The current scarcity of organs is the reason for people resorting to illegal means to get transplants. Against the current need of nearly 200,000 patients, only 4,000 are able to get donors,” Abbas said.