Paying Organ Donors For Travel, Recovery Could Enable More Low-Income People To Save Lives

Donors also have to consider missing work, child care costs and whether their jobs will wait for them.
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Last week I wrote about Iran, the only country in the world that pays kidney donors.

Iran shows that a kidney market need not resemble organ trafficking. Indeed, its market is closely regulated and has pre-empted the exploitative and abusive illegal markets found in many other countries.

Iran’s program has flaws, such as lack of follow-up for donors and limited support for poor recipients, that are typical of an underdeveloped health system. But the program also has lessons for countries like the United States, where the wait for a kidney can be as long as a decade.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot