President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda has approved a law to prevent the theft of human organs and tissues in a country where women have allegedly been tricked into having unnecessary surgeries, the Ugandan health minister said in a statement.
Recent cases of women recruited for domestic work in the Middle East being tricked into medical procedures, then having their kidneys sold in international trafficking rings, have been documented by local media.
Jane Aceng, the minister of health, thanked President Museveni in a tweet for approving the Uganda Human Organ Donation and Transplant Bill 2023, which will better govern the field. “The door is now open for #Uganda to begin a new chapter of Organ Transplant,” she said.
The bill came a day after President Museveni and his government faced widespread international criticism for passing one of the strictest anti-LGBTQ laws in the world, which included the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality.”
Any commercial use of human organs and tissues is now outlawed by the donation and transplant law, which is a first of its kind in Uganda.
Punishments include life imprisonment and hefty fines.
The influential Catholic Church in the country as well as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has previously discussed the frequency of organ trafficking in the country.
Although there was no law in place, Aceng acknowledged in September 2022 that there was a high demand for organ transplants in the country.
Source-Aljazeera
