KABUL (Al Jazeera) – Jobless, debt-ridden, and struggling to feed his children, Nooruddin felt he had no choice but to sell a kidney – one of a growing number of Afghans willing to sacrifice an organ to save their families.
The practice has become so widespread in the western city of Herat that a nearby settlement is bleakly nicknamed “one-kidney village”.
“I had to do it for the sake of my children,” Nooruddin told AFP in the city, close to the border with Iran.
“I didn’t have any other option.”
Afghanistan has been plunged into financial crisis following the Taliban takeover six months ago, worsening an already dire humanitarian situation after 20 years of war and United States occupation.
More than half of the country’s 38 million population suffers from acute hunger, with nearly 9 million Afghans at risk of famine, according to the United Nations.
The foreign aid that once propped up the country has been slow to return in the wake of U.S. sanctions. The country’s economy is near collapse after international financial institutions cut funding and the U.S. froze Afghanistan assets. U.S. President Joe Biden earlier this month decided to withhold about $7bn in Afghan assets, repurposing half of the money as compensation to the victims of the 9/11 attacks.
Aid agencies and experts have called for the lifting of sanctions against the Taliban, saying the measures are worsening the humanitarian crisis.
Nooruddin was among eight people AFP spoke to who had sold a kidney to feed their families or pay off debt – some for as little as $1,500.
In Afghanistan, however, the practice is unregulated.
“There is no law … to control how the organs can be donated or sold, but the consent of the donor is necessary,” said Mohammad Wakil Matin, a former top surgeon at a hospital in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
Mohamad Bassir Osmani, a surgeon at one of two hospitals where the majority of Herat’s transplants are performed, confirmed “consent” was the key.
“We have never investigated where the patient or donor comes from, or how. It’s not our job.”
The recipient pays both the hospital fees and the donor.
Azyta’s family had so little food that two of her three children have recently been treated for malnourishment.
She felt she had no choice but to sell an organ, and openly met a broker who matched her with a recipient from the southern province of Nimroz.
“I sold my kidney for 250,000 Afghanis [around $2,700],” she said from her small damp room.
“I had to do it. My husband isn’t working, we have debts,” she added.
Now her husband, a daily laborer, is planning on doing the same.