JEDDAH: The police in Jeddah have arrested several Arabs for trying to sell kidneys to desperate patients in the city.

A man recently contacted Al-Salamah police station and said some Arabs had used his identity card to open a file at a government hospital so that they could make contact with people there seeking kidney transplants, according to a report in a local publication recently.

Using this information, Maj. Gen. Mashood bin Faisal Al-Adwani, Jeddah’s police director, formed a special task team to set a trap for the criminals. A policeman was sent undercover and pretended he wanted to buy a kidney.

The undercover policeman met with the Arab man, who said he was acting as an intermediary for a donor living abroad. It was then that he was arrested, and under interrogation identified his accomplices.

Faisal bin Abdulrahim Shahen, director of the Saudi Center for Organ Transplantation, said there are 18,000 kidney patients in the country, with 60 percent on a waiting list for transplants.

He said 130 organ donations were approved recently, with this number expected to double in the future because the center was creating awareness about the issue and getting organs from brain dead people. He said patients whose lives are in danger are given priority for transplants.

Shahin said the illegal trade in kidneys and unapproved transplant operations pose a significant danger to the lives of patients, particularly if they travel overseas for this purpose.

He said there have been several instances of patients’ bodies rejecting kidneys they bought illegally. There is also the possibility that patients can contract infections that can be passed on to their family members. People dealing illegally in kidneys are unscrupulous and are only interested in making money, he said.

Trading in organs is banned by organizations across the world, including the World Health Organization. The Kingdom has signed an international convention against the trade in human organs.