China forcing prisoners to donate organs for black market

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China forcing prisoners to donate organs for black market

Published: Sun 26 Jun 2016, 1:18 PM

Last updated: Sun 26 Jun 2016, 10:08 PM

China may be harvesting organs from a large number of prisoners, according to a new report.
This is not the first time we are hearing of this news coming out of China. For years, human rights activists have accused the Chinese government of harvesting organs from executed prisoners and selling them to hospitals. In 2009, the government said it was working to stop the practice. But a new report allegedly says that this has continued  .
State-run media says there are about 10,000 organ transplants in China each year. But this study claims that number could actually be somewhere between 60,000 and 100,000. The research comes from the International Coalition to End Organ Pillaging in China
China said in 2014 it planned to stop using organs from executed prisoners, but if this report is to be believed, that didn't happen.
Among the methods used to obtain the shocking transplant figures, researchers reviewed data from telephone surveys, hospital websites, and medical journals for the 865 hospitals in China which perform organ transplants (about 13 per cent of all hospitals).
They tracked 712 liver and kidney transplant centres and collected and analysed information about them and examined individually 165 hospitals approved by the Government of China to conduct transplantation.
CNN breaks down the numbers: 5,019 organs on record as being transplanted in 2015 remain unaccounted for, and the number of transplants not documented federally is somewhere between 50,000 and 90,000. Six hundred and twelve hospitals the researchers found conducting transplants are not on the government's record as having approval to do so.
The report cites interviews with detained individuals that claim political prisoners are routinely given blood tests that other prisoners are not, in an effort to ensure their organs remain healthy enough to be transferred to another individual.
"I remembered they performed blood tests on us Falun Gong practitioners, not just once, but regularly, and it was to prepare for a possible match," Crystal Chen, a Falun Gong practitioner who has been arrested in China, told Voice of America.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying claimed the report's findings are false.
 

By Curated by Sarakshi Rai

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