**4.12 Transplant tourism (TT)**

The Declaration of Istanbul defines organ transplant tourism as travel for transplantation involving trafficking in persons, for the purpose of organ removal. Organ trafficking is defined as *"the recruitment, transport, transfer, harboring, or receipt of living or deceased persons or their organs by means of any form of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability, or of the giving to, or the receiving by, a third party of payments, or benefits to achieve the transfer of control over the potential donor for the purpose of exploitation by the removal of organs for transplantation* [97]*."* Transplant commercialism is the buying and selling of organs i.e. treating of organs as commodities. Travel for transplantation is the transport of organs, donors, recipients, or the professionals across borders for transplantation and it becomes TT if it entails organ trafficking and/or transplant commercialism [97]. Transplant tourism has become an increasing component of medical tourism (MT) especially in SSA. The disparity between the demand for and supply of organs encourages illegal organ procurement as transplantation may the only life-saving treatment in many end-organ failure. Unavailability and high cost of healthcare, lack of faith in local health systems, widening economic gap, ease of global travel and uneven global application of laws, have led to increase in TT.
