A male patient has filed a lawsuit seeking about 30 million yen from the Intractable Disease Patient Support Association, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.
The Tokyo-based nonprofit organization is suspected of facilitating a kidney transplant that used a trafficked organ overseas. The first court hearing will be held at the Tokyo District Court on Wednesday.
According to the complaint filed Dec. 7, the 58-year-old man from Kanagawa Prefecture was diagnosed in June 2021 with an intractable disease that causes rapid decline in kidney function, and started receiving dialysis treatment three times a week. He tried to register with the Japan Organ Transplant Network, an organization that matches donors to patients, but was told that the average waiting time for a kidney transplant was 17 years.
