Doctors arrested in organ trade bust in Egypt

Some of the doctors arrested worked at well-known institutions including the medical faculties of Cairo and Ain Shams universities. Photo / Getty Images

Egypt's health ministry has uncovered an illicit human organ trade in which migrants are selling body parts to reach Europe.

Forty-five doctors, nurses, middlemen and organ-buyers have been arrested for their alleged parts in the human harvest.

Unconfirmed reports suggest organ traders are targeting African migrants desperate for money to pay their for the way into Europe on rickety boats.

As well as the arrests, officials also recovered millions of dollars in a dawn raid on Tuesday, the health ministry said, in what they are calling the largest organ-trafficking network exposed in Egypt to date.

"The accused who were arrested exploited the economic situation of some Egyptians and the suffering of some patients and their need for treatment to take large financial sums from them, thus breaking the law," the ministry said in a statement.

It said the investigation focused on a group of private hospitals and health centres, both licensed and unlicensed, where transplants and organ harvesting took place.

The Health Ministry and Administrative Control Authority, a powerful anti-corruption body, said those premises had been shut by authorities while doctors involved were suspended from practice pending investigation by public prosecutors.

Some of the doctors arrested worked at well-known institutions including the medical faculties of Cairo and Ain Shams universities - Egypt's two largest state universities.