Doctors arrested after woman's kidneys, liver illegally transplanted

Six doctors were arrested in Anhui province after a woman's kidneys and liver were illegally transplanted.

Yang Suxun, former director of the Intensive Care Unit Department at Huaiyuan County People's Hospital, and five other doctors from a hospital in Jiangsu province, were arrested, local police confirmed with news website ThePaper.cn on Tuesday.

The donor, Li Ping, 53, was pronounced brain dead on Feb 15 last year, five days after being attacked by her eldest son during a family dispute. Her husband and younger son were also severely injured.

The eldest son was sentenced to 14 years and eight months in prison for intentional homicide.

According to her medical record, her husband and daughter agreed that her liver and kidneys be donated.

The consent form, which they signed, aroused suspicion from the younger son, Shi Xianglin, who noticed that the form had no seal or donation number.

"According to my sister, doctors informed her that our mother's condition was serious and she could not be saved. If they agreed to donate her organs, our family would get 200,000 yuan ($28,500) as a subsidy," Shi said.

According to ThePaper, three months after he recovered from his injuries, Shi visited China Organ Donation Administrative Center in Beijing.

"Staff from the center told me that information about organs donated through regular procedures can be traced in their system, but they couldn't find my mother's information," he said.

According to Chen Hu, an employee at the Red Cross Society of China's branch office in Huaiyuan county, organ donations should be free and voluntary, and the health department will not give subsidies to a donor's family.

Police records show that a hospital in Beijing conducted an examination on Li's liver five days after her donation, and another hospital in Tianjin conducted an examination on her kidneys nine days after the donation.

According to Shi, his family members received 200,000 yuan from a person named Huang Chaoyang one day after the donation.

"Yang (the ICU director) told me that he helped to apply for the subsidy and 200,000 was the highest level released by the health department," Shi said.

In June last year, Shi reported the case to the local health department, and said Yang had given him 460,000 yuan through a third party as hush money.

In April this year, the central government sent a supervision group to Anhui to crack down on organized crime, and Shi reported the case to the group.