‘Blood type O. DM me’: Myanmar’s poorest are so desperate they’re turning to social media to sell their kidneys

Editor’s Note: If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health matters, please call the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988 to connect with a trained counselor, or visit the 988 Lifeline website.

Hong Kong/New Delhi
CNN
—
Delivery driver Maung Maung’s wife and young daughter hadn’t eaten in three days, he recalled, when he walked into an internet cafe in his hometown of Mandalay, Myanmar, in late 2022.

He had recently been detained and tortured by the country’s military junta for weeks, he said, on suspicion of transporting goods for opposition forces, during which time his wife had been forced to take out loans to support the family.

When he was finally released, he had lost his job and the family found themselves penniless and ridden with debt. Desperate, Maung Maung went on Facebook and offered to sell his kidney.

“In that moment, I felt life was so harsh. There is no other way I could survive other than to rob or kill people for money,” he said. “My wife was the same, she didn’t want to stay in this world anymore. But only for the sake of our daughter we stayed.”

Months later in July 2023, Maung Maung, who asked to use a pseudonym for safety reasons, traveled to India for the transplant surgery. A wealthy Chinese-Burmese businessman had bought his kidney for 10 million Burmese kyat ($3,079), nearly twice the annual average urban household income in Myanmar, according to 2019 data from UN affiliated Myanmar Information Management Unit.

Maung Maung is not the only one.

A year-long CNN investigation has revealed desperate people in Myanmar, also known as Burma, hawking their organs to wealthy people on Facebook. With the help of agents, they travel to India, for instance, for transplants — defying laws in both countries, where selling organs is illegal.

CNN found posts offering to sell organs on at least three Burmese-language Facebook groups and spoke to two dozen people involved in the organ trade — including sellers, buyers and agents — to piece together the inner workings of an illicit industry fueled by desperation in a country ravaged by civil war.

When asked for comment, Meta, Facebook’s owner, said one online group had been removed, but the company declined to give further details or comment further. Facebook’s own rules do not allow content that lets users buy, sell or trade human body parts and breaches can be reported for review.

Coup sends poverty soaring
Three years since Myanmar’s military took power in a coup, nearly half of the country’s 54 million people live below the poverty line. That figure has doubled since 2017, researchers with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has found.

As various armed groups fought against junta control, violence spread across the country. Foreign investment dropped, unemployment skyrocketed and the cost of basic goods increased at a rate most people couldn’t keep up with. While sellers are poor and buyers relatively rich, both sides are in the illegal organ market because they find themselves in dire straits.

“To sell a part of your body is a difficult decision for everyone. Nobody wants to do it,” April, 26, who asked to go by a pseudonym, said shortly after advertising her kidney on Facebook in February. “The only reason I am doing this is because I have no choice.”

April said she abandoned her dreams of becoming a nurse and moved to Myanmar’s commercial capital Yangon when she was 18 to work in a garment factory and help support her family. But her monthly salary of $100 was not enough to keep up with rising costs exacerbated by the political crisis and medical bills that kept piling up as her aunt suffered from cancer.

“I am trying my best to survive amid such a challenging situation. There were days I cried. There were days I didn’t have anything to eat when my friends could not help me,” she told CNN.

One night, unable to sleep, she was up late scrolling Facebook when she came upon a group where people were offering to sell their kidneys. Most of these groups were made for patients suffering from kidney disease to share home remedies and recommend doctors. But in recent years, posts offering to sell organs have become increasingly common, a CNN analysis has found.

A person can still live a healthy life with one kidney, which makes this trade possible, but it’s a major surgery that can have lasting consequences. The biggest risk is not having a backup in case anything happens to the remaining kidney, according to the National Kidney Foundation.

April quickly wrote up her own post: “I want to donate my kidney. My blood type is O. I need money for my aunt who has cancer and needs an operation. I’m 26 years old and I don’t drink. DM me.”

An illegal but accessible industry
In the online organ trade, buyers and sellers often work with agents, middlemen who match donors with recipients, to forge the necessary documents and arrange surgery.

Because the sale of organs is illegal in India and donations are permitted only among relatives, with a few rare exceptions, agents often forge household records, family trees and other documents with the help of lawyers and notaries. Myanmar’s embassy in New Delhi has to review the paperwork in order to pass the case to the state or hospital authorization committee.

The authorization committee is the final line of defense. It’s designed to catch anyone trying to cheat the system. Documents, family photos and bank statements are checked, and interviews conducted to expose strangers posing as family members or anyone trafficking organs.

CNN has reached out to Myanmar’s embassy in New Delhi and the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare for comment, but did not get a response.

Thiri Khine, who asked to use a pseudonym so she could speak safely, became a widow when her husband died eight years ago. Six years later, ravaged by kidney disease, she posed for new wedding photos. This time, the groom smiling next to her was the man whose kidney she was buying for 12 million kyat ($3,695).

Thiri Khine tried to get a transplant by getting on the official transplant waitlist, but said the process would’ve taken years, at which point she may have already died from her illness.

Between 1995 and 2022, there were only 308 successful kidney transplants in Myanmar, according to ruling junta chief Min Aung Hlaing’s office.

Since the coronavirus pandemic and the coup, transplants can only be performed at military hospitals, with a few exceptions, according to one current and one former doctor in Yangon who asked to remain anonymous out of fear for their safety.

The war has also created a shortage of doctors.

In the early days of the military takeover, doctors were often at the forefront of the resistance movement, treating injured protesters and staging strikes. For this, they paid a high price, with many medical professionals arrested or forced to flee the country, leaving Myanmar’s already fragile healthcare system on the brink of collapse.

‘Family photos’, a trip to India

Hot topics

Finance

Marketing

Politics

Strategy

Hot topics

Finance

Marketing

Politics

Strategy

‘Blood type O. DM me’: Myanmar’s poorest are so desperate they’re turning to social media to sell their kidneys

Topics

Related Articles

Quik Link

The latest

Contact us