Coming up on
Special Assignment tonight (21 March, 2011):
Special Assignment investigates South Africa’s biggest private hospital, Net care’s controversial role in the cash-for-kidneys scam. A story that has made headlines both locally and internationally.
The show travels to Recife in northeastern Brazil to search for the kidney sellers that sold their organs for transplant into the bodies of wealthy Israeli’s at Netcare in Durban.
The investigation finds that some of them are now suffering from medical related illnesses after their kidneys were harvested.
Interviewed: Rogelio Bezerra - the last of the kidney sellers to travel to South Africa who was arrested after selling his kidney and returned home with
no money and no kidney. Bezerra was hoping to start a small workshop with the little money he made from his kidney. However his hopes of economic freedom were permanently shattered when the money was confiscated by the SAPS.
In an off-camera interview Special Assignment came face-to-face with the notorious Brazilian kingpin of the crime syndicate, Captain Ivan Bonifacio, this after he demanded huge sums of money to be interviewed.
Captain Ivan terrorized the poorer suburbs of Recife as he went about recruiting desperately poor people in the slums to travel to Durban to sell their organs.
The show also speaks to Durban surgeon Professor John Robb. who’s fighting Netcare through several media reports. Robb’s and his colleagues have refused to plead guilty and pay a fine for their role in the illegal transplants. This could see the case go to trial later this year, which, if convicted, could see them barred from practicing medicine or jailed.
Through the investigation Special Assignment asks: did Netcare know that transplants were illegal? Did Netcare put their profits above the desperation of hundreds of poor people? What about the surgeons? Are they guilty?
Special Assignment is on SABC3 on Mondays at 21h00 (during the World Cup cricket.)