Kidney Valley
RT (2017)
Film Review
This documentary concerns Karnali Province in Nepal, where approximately 10,000 kidneys are illegally harvested every year by traffickers. Most are smuggled into India, where patients buy them for $15,000-20,000 each. Filmmakers visit one village where roughly one person per household has sold a kidney.
The traffickers take advantage of extreme poverty and low education levels to coerce villagers to agree to surgery. Although they are promised $5,000-6,000 for undergoing the procedure, “donors” typically receive $500-1,000 at most.
Nepal’s illegal kidney trade has been in operation for roughly 20 years report Karnali residents are much more willing to up up their kidneys since a 2015 earthquake made tens of thousands of them homeless.
