Lifestyle
Hokse: Here’s the community where everybody has one Kidney
By Balogun Kamilu Lekan
Hokse is a remote village in Nepal. It is a very rural community yet very famous. It is known for being the hub of the world’s most lucrative kidney market.
Hokse has earned the moniker “Kidney Village” due to the widespread illegal trade of kidney harvesting. Nearly all of its residents have reportedly sold their kidneys to organ traffickers for a significant profit.
Most adult men and women residing in Hokse have felt enticed to sell one of their healthy kidneys to individuals known as ‘organ brokers’ in Nepal.
Poverty is the facilitating factor while the people of Nepal place themselves under the knife to have their organs harvested. The villagers, who are mostly agrarian, live below $2 a day.
The only escape from poverty for these people is to fall for the temptation of a meagre minimum stipend, as low as $150, and trade their kidney for it. The desire for a good life and luxury tricked most victims into this evil industry.
The World Health Organization reports that the illicit market for human organs has escalated to the extent that approximately 10,000 illegal transactions involving purchased organs occur each year, which is equivalent to more than one occurrence per hour.
The brokers sometimes resort to abducting and coercing these villagers into donating an organ, willingly agreeing to sell an organ due to financial hardships, or being deceived into thinking they require a medical procedure and having an organ removed without their awareness.
Victims are taken to India for organ removal. Once harvested, the organs are then sold to wealthy recipients for six times what the donor receives.
According to the villagers, the pattern used by the organ brokers to convince them into an agreement is by telling them that the harvested organ will grow back.
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.Hokshe is a cluster of mud-brick homes flanked by fields of corn, sitting high up in the hills that circle Kathmandu. The arterial roads heading west from the village serve as tributaries that feed the capital with an ever fluid labor force made up of young and old, men and women, who see little point in staying at home to farm small patches of land for less than $2 a day. But the village carries a dark secret: of the 75 households in one ward alone, almost all have at least one member who has sold a kidney.
Most adult men and women living in Hokse have been tempted to cash in and sell one of their healthy kidneys to so-called ‘organ brokers’ in Nepal.
The smooth-taking body parts traffickers regularly visit Hokse and surrounding cash-strapped villages in the Kavrepalanchowk District and attempt to persuade those living there to have operations in southern India, where organ trading is big business.
They use a number of tricks and tactics to coerce victims into parting with vital organs. One of them is to play on their naivety – and tell them that the body part will grow back.
That was the trick used to dupe Geeta, which finally persuaded her to go ahead with the operation.
‘For ten years people came to our village trying to convince us to sell our kidneys but I always said no,’ she said.
But swayed by her desire to provide a house and land for her growing family, she eventually went with her husband’s sister to India.
‘I have always wanted my own house and a piece of land, and with more children, I really needed it,’ Geeta explained.
The operation took just half an hour, but she remained in hospital for three weeks.
‘When I woke up after the operation I felt like nothing had happen and I was surprised that it was already done,’ she said.
‘I was then paid 200,000 Nepalese rupees (£1,300) for my kidney and went home to my village to buy my own house and some land,’ she went on, describing many Nepalese people’s dream of owning their own home.
According to the World Health Organisation, this illegal trade has risen to such a level that an estimated 10,000 black-market operations involving purchased human organs now take place annually – more than once every hour.
Up to 7,000 kidneys are obtained illegally every year, according to a report by Global Financial Integrity.
That same report shows the illegal organ trade generates profits of up to £650million a year.
Organ trafficking operates in various ways. Victims can be kidnapped and forced to give up an organ; some, out of financial desperation, agree to sell an organ; or they are duped into believing they need an operation and the organ is removed without their knowledge.
Some victims are murdered to order if a large sum has been paid in advance.
Once ‘harvested’ at hospitals in southern India, the organs are then sold on to wealthy recipients for six times what the donor receives
