A 6-year-old boy was recovering in hospital in China's Shanxi
province on Wednesday after his eyes were gouged out in an attack that
has left him permanently blind, according to state media reports.
Local police said a
female suspect had gouged out the boy's eyes on Saturday evening, but
ruled out the possibility that organ traffickers had carried out the
attack.
Earlier state media
reports said the boy, named as Xiao Binbin from Fenxi County in Shanxi
Province, was found four hours after he went missing in a drugged state
and missing his eyeballs, China Central Television said on its Sina
Weibo account.
The reports claimed the
boy's eyes were found nearby with the corneas missing, which local
police have since denied, according to state media.
State media pictures on
CCTV news Weibo showed pictures of a boy with bandages over his eyes
recovering in hospital while his stricken relatives cried at his
bedside.
China has traditionally
relied on executed criminals to harvest transplant organs in a country
where few people donate organs. In 2008, just 36 people donated organs
out of a population of 1.3 billion people. A government donation program
run by the Red Cross Society has had just under 3,000 donations the
past three years, according to Xinhua.
In 2007, China introduced
new regulations that banned organ trading and trafficking, and cracked
down on "transplant tourism" by non-Chinese nationals. China's Supreme
Court also introduced new rules the same year to reduce the number of
executions, making the present transplant system unsustainable. China
plans to phase out involuntary organ donations of executed prisoner by
2014, state media reported.
About 300,000 patients
have organ failure each year, but only about 10,000 transplants are done
each year due to donor shortages, Xinhua reported.
On September 1, national
health officials will launch a computerized system to match organs to
patients among the 165 hospitals permitted to carry out transplants.
By Peter Shadbolt
No comments:
Post a Comment