South Africa’s very own surgery tourism trade has boomed for a while. We’ve been well-known as a great destination for the industry because we’re inexpensive. Now the smoke around the kidney transplant scam has finally begun to bellow. Over the weekend Netcare decided it was no longer going to comment on the scandal.

The Commercial Crimes Unit has been confirmed as now investigating Cape doctors too, stated Health MEC Theuns Botha.

A leading Durban vascular surgeon, Professor John Robbs, apparently blew the lid off the scandal in which the kidneys of poor Brazilians and Israelis were harvested for rich, terminally ill Israeli clients.

UCTs Surgery Department Head Prof Dell Kahn has been quoted as saying that the practice of alleged illegal kidney transplants has been going on for quite a while and is common knowledge amongst the medical fraternity.

Botha however said Robbs’ statement was not new and that it had been a “spill-over” from the case at Durban’s Commercial Crimes Court.

Either way, the cat is now well and truly out of the bag. Theuns is threatening to withdraw the health licences of the hospitals implicated, namely City Park Hospital (Christiaan Barnard Memorial), and Groote Schuur’s private hospital.

[Source: IOL]