ABSTRACT
Vijaykumar, aged 47, from Jalahalli in Bangladore was suering from irreversible kidney failure; in medical parlance, he had end-stage renal disease (ESRD). In July 1998 he received a kidney from 33-year-old Shan Basha from Sahidapet in Vellore, Tamil Nadu. Shan Basha claimed that he was donating his kidney out of “compassion” for the recipient. Vijaykumar is one of 1,012 patients in Karnataka who, between January 1996 and March 2002, were o- cially cleared to receive kidneys from unrelated live “donors.” e approval for all these donations came from the Karnataka Authorisation Committee, a body set up under the Transplantation of Human Organs Act of 1994 to ensure that no buying and selling of human organs take place.
