TOKYO Kyodo, head of a Japanese nonprofit organization, has been arrested on suspicion of mediating an organ transplant performed overseas without government permission, in the first such case in Japan, according to investigative sources.
After the arrest of Hiromichi Kikuchi for violating organ transplant law, police have filed a case against the Association for Patients of Intractable Diseases.
Kikuchi, 62, is suspected of ordering relatives of a man in his 40 s living in Tokyo that the man undergoes a transplant overseas without government permission.
After asking the relatives to pay 33 million yen $251,000 into the NPO's bank account for travel and transplant costs, he arranged for the man to undergo a liver transplant from a deceased donor at a hospital in Belarus around February 10, 2022, according to the sources.
After the surgery, the patient's condition worsened. He received another liver transplant from a living family member in Japan, but was unable to recover and died.
Kikuchi denied part of the allegations, saying he was not aware that permission was required for transplants performed overseas.
The NPO, founded in 2007, says on its website that it has guided people who wish to receive transplants to overseas medical institutions, but does not mediate organ transplants.
Japan has one of the lowest rates of organ donation among industrialized countries, according to the Nippon Foundation, which supports the Japan Organ Transplant Network.
There were 103 organs registered for transfer in fiscal 2016. As of June 2017, about 13,450 registered patients were waiting for a heart, liver, kidney, or other organ transplant, according to the foundation.
Under the transplant law unauthorized mediation is prohibited and a fine of up to a million yen is up to one year, a fine of up to one million yen, or both.