Family to file lawsuit to get son's donated organs back;
28 March 2012 / TODAY'S ZAMAN, ISTANBUL
The family of a donor whose organs have been transplanted into different patients and was then required to pay a transplant cost of TL 12,500 now intends to file a lawsuit against the recipients to take the donated organs back, the Cihan news agency reported on Wednesday.
After 22-year-old Alper Kayik, who was seriously wounded in a traffic accident, was declared officially brain dead in January 2009, his family made the decision to donate his organs. A transplantation team removed Kayik's organs in Bursa's Sevket Yilmaz State Hospital. Kayik's liver, kidney and cornea were then transplanted into patients in Ankara's Hacettepe University Faculty of Medicine Hospital, Istanbul's Gülhane Military Academy of Medicine (GATA) and Bursa's Uludag University Medical Faculty Hospital, respectively.
The donor's grieving family then received a TL 12,500 bill for transplantation costs from the Sevket Yilmaz Hospital. Kayik's uncle Nuri Engin, who works at a courthouse in Bursa, took the bill to the Bursa Governor's Office and said the family could not afford to pay the bill. The governor then lowered the cost to TL 1,500.
The family was also disillusioned by the fact that transplant patients who received Kayik's organs did not even make a thank-you phone call. Engin said the family will file a lawsuit against the transplant recipients to receive the donated organs back.
