Myanmar’s poor selling their organs

Under threat of starvation, people experiencing poverty in Myanmar traveled to India to sell their organs, according to a CNN investigation published on Friday. 

Investigators spoke to Maung Maung in 2022, who decided to sell his kidneys after witnessing his wife and daughter go without food for three days.

The family had entered into debt after Maung was arrested and tortured by the country’s militia junta. Held for weeks on suspicion of transporting resources for the opposition forces, Maung’s wife was forced to take out loans in his absence.

In severe debt, Maung told CNN that he decided to sell his kidney.

“In that moment, I felt life was so harsh. There is no other way I could survive other than to rob or kill people for money,” he said. “My wife was the same; she didn’t want to stay in this world anymore. But only for the sake of our daughter, we stayed.”

In July 2023, Maung found a buyer and traveled to India for surgery. A Chinese-Burmese businessman had purchased his kidney for 10 million Burmese kyat ($3,079 or approx. NIS 17,800). 

While the amount Maung received was equivalent to nearly twice the annual average urban household income in Myanmar, according to 2019 data from the UN-affiliated Myanmar Information Management Unit, it is significantly less than it is valued on the global black market. According to a research paper from 2021, held by the Parliament of Canada, a black market kidney can range in price from $50,000-$120,000

Source: Agencies