{"id":9739,"date":"2020-09-28T03:00:21","date_gmt":"2020-09-28T01:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/danwatch.dk\/hi-sister-do-you-want-to-sell-your-kidney\/"},"modified":"2024-08-07T11:42:21","modified_gmt":"2024-08-07T09:42:21","slug":"hi-sister-do-you-want-to-sell-your-kidney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danwatch.dk\/en\/hi-sister-do-you-want-to-sell-your-kidney\/","title":{"rendered":"Hi Sister, do you want to sell your kidney?"},"content":{"rendered":"

My name is Sarah. I\u2019m 23, and I live in Northern Iran with my mother and my younger sister.<\/p>\n

Those who have visited villages in Gilan province, know that most people living in this breathtakingly beautiful, rich nature are poverty-stricken.<\/p>\n

Even those who own a piece of land or a rice paddy, are idle for at least six months of the year.<\/p>\n

We have neither a land of our own, nor any savings. In a word, we are the poorest of the poor.<\/p>\n

When I was younger, my father used to work on rice paddies as a land worker for half the year, and the other half he worked with his motorcycle, giving rides to people.<\/p>\n

When I was 12, my father got run over by a ten-wheel truck and passed away. My sister and I were left orphans, and my mother had no choice but to earn our living by cleaning houses.<\/p>\n

But the pressure of physical labor was too much for her, and when she couldn\u2019t bear it anymore, I had to drop out of school and get a job.<\/p>\n

An acquaintance helped me find a job in a beauty salon in a nearby city called \u201cSowme\u2019eh Sara\u201d. I didn\u2019t earn much, but as the saying goes \u201csomething is better than nothing\u201d.<\/p>\n

My job was to do the cleaning, but I dreamt of learning the profession and becoming a hairdresser so my poor mother can retire. But about a year ago everything suddenly changed, and my life took a turn for the worse.<\/p>\n

The owner of the salon where I worked decided to close down the salon and move to another city and I lost my job. Around the same time my mother was diagnosed with colon cancer. We sold all we had and borrowed from anyone we could think of to pay for her treatment.<\/p>\n

It has been a few months since my mother started chemotherapy and we cannot afford to pay the medical bills anymore. The drugs, the hospital bills, the specific diet, \u2026 it\u2019s all too much.<\/p>\n

There is no one left I can turn to for help. I even went to several charitable organizations, including Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation<\/i> in our province, but to no avail. In order to be able to pay at least part of my mother\u2019s treatment expenses, and take care of my sister, I need to have at least tens of millions of Tomans, but all I have is debt.<\/p>\n

One night, when I was sitting by my sick mother\u2019s bedside, I decided to do what many other people in my situation would do: I decided to sell my kidney.<\/p>\n

I had seen it before and I knew in order to sell a kidney people would post some kind of a flyer or write their contact number on the walls in specific streets of the city so the potential clients\/buyers could contact them.<\/p>\n

I talked to a relative of a friend whose brother had had a kidney transplant to find out how dangerous it could be. He told me it depends on the broker I choose to work with.<\/p>\n

If I end up in the hands of a shady person \u2013and let\u2019s face it, they very often are shady- there could be some problems, but the transplant itself is not a particularly complicated or dangerous operation.<\/p>\n

Different people have different ideas of what constitutes \u201cdanger\u201d.<\/p>\n

But even if one decides to accept the physical and psychological risks of such a surgery \u2013risks that are usually understated-, there is still a complicated procedure to be completed before the actual organ procurement operation; a procedure which is neither that easy nor straightforward.<\/p>\n

How could Sarah manage to sell her kidney under such circumstances?<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

Actually my name is not Sarah Salehi. My name is Kolaleh Parsa and I am a journalist at the Iranian exile media Zamaneh, based in Amsterdam.\u00a0 But I had to tell you the above story to take you on the same journey I had to take to research a complicated phenomenon called \u201ccommercial kidney trade\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sarah is a fictional character which helped me circumvent the prohibitions I would have faced as an Iranian journalist residing abroad had I used my true identity.<\/p>\n

I still remember the first time I saw a flyer advertising a kidney for sale. Back then I still lived in Iran.<\/p>\n

I was shocked and asked myself how a person could resort to selling an organ, and whether this was legal. The shock and astonishment stayed with me for years as I watched the number of advertisements grow.<\/p>\n

They were everywhere: on city walls, on different websites, on social media, even on texting applications. A while ago, I finally decided to take a closer look at the process of selling a kidney in Iran.<\/p>\n

The present article is the outcome of this research.<\/p>\n

Organ donation in Iran<\/a><\/p>\n