Investigations into suspicious kidney transplants in Croatia included Kosovo donor

As Croatian Radio-Television (HRT) reports, it is kidney donors from Serbia and Kosovo “two with lower social status” while organ recipients are men from Croatia.

The Croatian Health Ministry said the case, originally, has been handed over to the Croatian Medical Chamber because of the violation of the Code of Medical Ethics, while later at the State Prosecutor.

Responding to allegations of organ trafficking, the Hospital Centre in Zagreb said that “all transplants were performed with the approval of the Ethics Commission” of this centre.

The “all the activities and procedures undertaken are identical to procedures conducted in all other transplant centres in the Republic of Croatia, where kidney transplants are made by a living donor, which has no connection with listener”, says a statement by the Hospital Centre in Zagreb, broadcast the Balkan Radio Free Europe Service.

In Croatia, transplantation of organs by living donors, which have no connection with the receiver, is possible.

The controls are strict and donors must undergo specific psychological tests, approval by experts from the transplant centre, and the health institution's ethics commission where transplantation is conducted, HRT reports.

The advertising of availability or the need for organs is sentenced to prison for up to three years.

Lawyer Nevena Alinovic, from the Department of Legal Sciences at the University of Split, told HRT that organ transplantation in cases where the donor person is a victim of human trafficking is punished with the severest sentence of up to ten years in prison.

According to HRT, Croatia, with more than 100 kidney transplants annually, is among the world's leading countries.