Abstract
The controversial subject of transplant tourism has been neglected in the travel medicine literature. According to the Declaration of Istanbul, travel for transplantation can be regarded as transplant tourism if it involves organ trafficking and/or commercialised transplantation activities. While no registry of transplant tourism activities exists, published case series point to significant negative clinical outcomes. Adverse outcomes among donors include postoperative depression and anxiety, deterioration in health status, poor surgical wound care, and negative financial effects. Poor perioperative management, inadequate immunosuppression, blood transfusion-associated infections, antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections and invasive fungal infections, are among the most commonly reported complications in transplanted patients. Iran operates a legal and ethically regulated system of rewarded altruistic kidney donation. Travel medicine practitioners have a role to play in protecting the health of intending transplant tourists through targeted pre-travel health counselling and vaccination.
Highlights
Medical tourism, or travel across international borders for the purpose of receiving medical care either unavailable or inaccessible in the traveller’s own country, has emerged as a burgeoning industry, projected to be worth an estimated $28 billion per year by 2025.1 While the medical tourism categories of cardiac surgery tourism,[2] cosmetic surgery tourism,[3] and stem cell tourism[4] have attracted the interest of travel medicine researchers, the more controversial subject of transplant tourism has been largely neglected in the travel medicine literature
The aim of this perspective article is to provide an overview of the current state of transplant tourism, to consider its origins, outcomes and ethical dilemmas, and to briefly examine sustainable models of transplant tourism which may better serve the interests of society
Regulation of Transplant Tourism Suggested measures to counter transplant tourism include legal enforcement in destination countries, extraterritorial criminalisation of recipients who travel overseas to receive an organ obtained through commercial means, self-policing of medical professionals involved in surgical transplant procedures, and restriction of insurance coverage in recipient countries.[22]
Summary
Transplant Tourism and Organ Trafficking: Current Practices, Controversies and Solutions. Gerard Thomas Flaherty1,2* ID , Nizrull Nasir[3], Conor M. Gormley[4], Suyash Pandey[1]. Received January 15, 2021; Accepted May 10, 2021; Online Published June 26, 2021
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