“I just wanted to own a house and pay off my debts – that’s why I decided to sell my kidney,” says Zeya, a farm worker in Myanmar.
Prices had soared after a military coup in 2021 triggered civil war. He could barely feed his young family and was badly in debt.
They all lived in his mother-in-law’s house, in a village where thatched houses lined dirt roads, a few hours’ drive from the country’s largest city, Yangon.
Zeya, whose name has been changed to conceal his identity, knew of local people who had sold one of their kidneys. “They looked healthy to me,” he says. So he started asking around.
He is one of eight people in the area who told BBC Burmese they had sold a kidney by travelling to India.
Illegal organ trading is a problem across Asia, and Zeya’s story gives an insight into how it takes place.
Arranging the deal
Buying or selling human organs is illegal in both Myanmar and India, but Zeya says he soon found a man he describes as a “broker”.
He says the man arranged medical tests and, a few weeks later, told him a potential recipient – a Burmese woman – had been found, and that both of them could travel to India for the surgery.
In India, if the donor and recipient are not close relatives, they must demonstrate that the motive is altruistic and explain the relationship between them.
Zeya says the broker forged a document, which every household in Myanmar must have, listing the details of family members.
“The broker put my name in the recipient’s family tree,” he explains.
He says the broker made it appear as if he was donating to someone he was related to by marriage: “Someone who is not a blood relative, but a distant relative”
