(12 Nov 2014) LEAD-IN:
Impoverished villagers in Nepal are suffering serious medical complications and reduced quality of life after selling their kidneys to organ traffickers.
One village, dubbed "the kidney bank" has whole families of victims - who have not only damaged their health after selling their kidney, but have also been duped out of the money promised to them.
STORYLINE:
"I should have never trusted the broker to give my kidney. I wish I had not left my job. It really hurts when I carry any load on me," says Kumar Budathoki.
Under crushing financial strain, Budathoki sold one of his kidneys to organ traffickers for $5,000, a sum he hoped would help set him up for a lifetime free of money problems.
Instead, he got a lifetime of health problems - and only a fraction of the money promised to him by a broker in Hokshe, a village of tiny farms and mud huts that has been the centre of the illegal organ trade in Nepal for more than a decade.
Budathoki says the broker downplayed the risks of the surgery, and promised to pay him $5,000 but only handed over $1,000.
"It has been 13 years since I gave my kidney but it still hurts when I work. I was duped and cheated by the broker but I kept quiet," he says.
Budhathoki's neighbour, Mohan Sapkota also sold his kidney in 1997. Now he has to travel nearly 50 kilometers (30 miles) to the capital, Kathmandu every month to see a specialist for his legs, which constantly ache since he gave up a kidney.
Sapkota says at the time he had no idea what a kidney even was.
"When we went to the doctor for the transplant the doctor had asked, but a relative of the recipient who I think was an army colonel had told me not to say anything and say I have no diseases at all. He winked or something to the doctor and that was it. I had no idea what kidney was, I had never been to school. The old man who got my kidney once told me that if I gave my kidney he would live."
The donors, promised hundreds or even thousands of dollars in a country where per capita income is only $700, would cross the border into India for the surgery, with their organs destined for wealthy patients there.
The black market for human organs is believed to be flourishing around the world, with kidneys the most common of all trafficked organs because they can be harvested from live donors, unlike other body parts.
But in Hokshe, traffickers have operated with surprising impunity.
Nearly every resident seems to know someone who has sold a kidney on the black market.
For more than a decade, traffickers openly stalked the village, high in the mountains outside Kathmandu, scouting for farmers and poor labourers to lure or dupe into giving up kidneys.
Despite a recent clampdown on the trade, many villagers who already sold their kidneys are still broke. Now they have the added burden of physical complications related to the surgeries.
Years of campaigning by social workers, along with more recent monitoring by police, have curbed the trafficking significantly.
Krishna Pyari Nakarmi has been campaigning against organ traffickers for the past 4 years.
"We began our campaign against kidney trafficking in the district calling it 'the operation of Hokshe' and we were able to file cases against traffickers and have been successful. Now we can safety say that kidney trafficking in the village has come under control," she says.
Police arrested 10 traffickers last year. Three of them, including Pram Bajgai, considered the kingpin of the trade, are in jail; the others are out on bail but awaiting trial.
Budathoki is now unable to work long hours, carry heavy things or walk too long.
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