National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Human Rights on Friday directed the police departments of all four provinces, Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan to keep an eye on illegal sale and purchase of human organs in the country. Meeting of the committee was held under the chair of MNA Babar Nawaz Khan in the Parliament House wherein the members were briefed about the illegal sale and purchase of human organs and Human Organ Transplant Law.
Mirza Naqi Zafar of Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT), Karachi, briefed the committee members about the existing Human Organ Transplant Law and some loopholes in it. The committee members said that necessary amendments in the law should be introduced to plug the loopholes and put an end to the illegal business. They also directed police departments of all four provinces including Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan to co-ordinate with the National Commission for Human Rights to stop the illegal trade of human organs.
Chairman of the committee also urged the print and electronic media to trace the culprits and hospitals involved in illegal human organ transplant activities. “No donor and no person empowered to give authority for removal of any human organ for any purpose other than the therapeutic purposes,” the law says.
The law also says that whoever renders his services to or at any medical institution or hospital and who for the purposes of transplantation, conducts, associates with or helps in any manner, in the removal of any human organ without authority shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 10 years and with fine which may extend to one million rupees.
It also says that where any person convicted is a registered medical practitioner, his name shall also be reported to the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council for appropriate action including removal of his name from the register of the Council for a period of three years for the first offence and permanently for subsequent offence. The committee members also unanimously condemned the killings of Kashmiris in Occupied Kashmir by the Indian Forces. They also decided to write separate letters to the United Nations and other Human Rights Committees all over the world to take notice of the brutal killings of Kashmiri People by the Indian Armed Forces.
