Blood Racket Drained Poor Indian Workers
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When Durga Prasad heard of the mysterious job with the hefty paycheck, he jumped at it, no questions asked.
The work could be risky—Prasad figured he’d be asked to smuggle drugs into Nepal—but for the itinerant laborer from Uttar Pradesh, one of the poorest states in India, the money was worth it: 250 rupees a day, about $6.
“I knew it must be some illegal work because no one pays so much money to an illiterate person like me,” Prasad said.
The salary turned out to be part of a trap that ensnared Prasad and 14 other poor laborers, who were held captive while their blood was drained for sale to private medical clinics.
The case has raised concerns about medical oversight in India—a nation eager to draw some of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who go to Asian hospitals for cheaper medical care each year.
Five men have been arrested in the illegal racket, but authorities are still searching for the suspected ringleader, said police official Brij Lal.
Prasad and the 14 others were rescued two weeks ago from a small filthy room inside a house in the slums of Gorakhpur, a town about 155 miles southeast of Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, police said.
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Some of the men in Gorakhpur apparently sold their blood willingly, but the payments stopped early on, and when they asked for money they said they were beaten.
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While cases like these highlight the vulnerability of the poor, they also raise serious concerns about the complicity of the medical establishment and the lack of proper oversight over hospitals and clinics—a problem for a country trying to position itself as a leading destination for so-called medical tourism.
With an estimated 45 million uninsured Americans, some 500,000 trek overseas each year for medical treatment, according to the National Coalition on Health Care—much of it at Asian hospitals in Thailand, Singapore and India.
The low cost of medical care in India has made it a popular destination for Americans and other foreigners in need of everything from tummy tucks to hip replacements or heart surgery.
While India has a range of laws overseeing medical care, enforcement is often exceedingly lax and corruption is widespread. Screening donors for illegal drug use or exposure to diseases like AIDS, hepatitis B or C, or malaria is usually left to individual clinics and hospitals. In India, a nation of 1.1 billion, some 2.5 million people are infected with HIV, according to international AIDS experts and Indian health officials.
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However, he said blood banks are perilously understocked in northern India, where many people don’t understand the need for blood donations.
“We do not have donors,” he said. “Even relatives of those patients who need blood shy away from donating. This leads to such rackets.”
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(Posted on April 4, 2008)
Comments
While they’re at it, they might as well bring back Thugee and Suttee. That ought to go well with the blood draining business.
Tom Iron…
Posted by Tom Iron... at 7:30 PM on April 4
I believe most of the owners of the medical clinic in Nevada were Indian. This is the medical clinic that may have infected 40,000 (who knows the real number?) people with HIV or Hepatitis C. It’s a shame Western medicine is being infected with third world practices.
Posted by Drew at 7:41 PM on April 4
Yea, India is going to overtake us soon I can see. Actually, the ones that come to the USA seem to be ‘upper caste’ cases, so they are a bit more compatable, but still…
Posted by at 8:07 PM on April 4
I think my stomach just twisted, because I feel an unsubsiding need to vomit.
Someone on this site actually suggested that I get my lap band in India instead of Mexico. I have to say I haven’t heard of this happening in Monterrey!
Posted by Jacqui in AZ at 2:21 AM on April 5
At Amren we discuss many important issues affecting us and I consider our own health as important as our heritage. I hope all at Amren are healthy and stay that way.
Posted by Lars at 11:09 PM on April 5
Those fellows should just be happy they weren’t killed for organ transplant tissue. Transplants don’t work well across racial lines, but many subcontinental are close enough to white that it might work.
Posted by Michael C Scott at 2:16 AM on April 6
I am just surprised it was financially feasible. One would think having to feed those guys for weeks between blood letting would eat up all the profits.
Posted by Sonya at 2:30 PM on April 6
Interesting, the blood plasma center in my college town was run by Indians/Hindi. Mostly poor people and indigent college students sold their blood for plasma. I can’t comment on the conditions having never given blood at the plasma center—the place gave me the creeps!
Posted by Sardonicus at 3:27 PM on April 6