The illegal organ trade in China took a gruesome turn when a 6-year-old boy had his eyes gouged out in order to steal his corneas, authorities believe.

The boy was playing outside his house Saturday evening in the northern province of Shanxi when he was taken, drugged and had his eyes removed, according to Chinese TV reports.

His parents noticed he was missing and organized a search for the boy. They found him hours after he had disappeared in a nearby field, with a bloody face. His father told a Chinese news agency that at first, he thought the boy had fallen and hurt himself.

"He had blood all over his face. His eyelids were turned inside out. And inside, his eyeballs were not there," his father told Shanxi Television, news reports said.

"We didn't notice his eyes were gone when we discovered him. We thought he fell down from high," he said.

The boy's eyeballs were eventually found near the spot where he was discovered, but the corneas were gone, reports said Tuesday.

The boy, who also was born with a cleft palate, is expected to be blinded for life, Agence France-Presse reported. He was recovering in hospital in stable condition with his family at his side, according to China Daily.

The horrific case has once again shone a spotlight on organ trafficking in China. A lack of donors means that about 300,000 patients in China wait for transplants every year, but only about 10,000 people can get them, the AFP said, citing Chinese state media.

The Chinese have only recently adopted an organ donation system and it is growing slowly, said David Matas, a Canadian international human rights lawyer.

But organ-related kidnappings are extremely rare, according to Dr. Jeffrey Zaltzman, director of transplants at St. Michael's Hospital. In most cases, people selling their organs for money usually know what they are doing, he said.

He said Tuesday he has never heard of a child being harmed this way in order to retrieve corneas.

"Most of the organ trafficking, with solid organs, usually occurs with some degree of knowledge from the vendor. But this is an entire other degree," said Zaltzman, who is also the chief medical officer for transplants for Ontario's Trillium Gift of Life Network.

Unlike other organs that need to be harvested fast, there is no real urgency for taking out corneas - they can be left in deceased donors for longer periods of time, he added.

"Cornea transplants are done all the time and always done from someone deceased in hospital," he said.

"I've never heard of anything like this. It is quite terrible," he said.

While legitimate organ donation is a relatively new concept in China, the government has been internationally condemned for the practice of selling organs retrieved from dead prisoners, Matas said.

"The selling of organs from prisoners without their consent is a billion-dollar business in China," he said.

Matas published an investigative research paper with former Edmonton area MP David Kilgour in 2007, called "Bloody Harvest."

Matas and Kilgour discovered "large-scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners" who are in prison, the report read. Falun Gong or Falun Dafa is a spiritual discipline that is forbidden in China.

"Their vital organs, including kidneys, livers, corneas and hearts, were seized involuntarily for sale at high prices, sometimes to foreigners, who normally face long waits for voluntary donations of such organs in their home countries," the report said.

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China has denied the allegations contained in the report, calling it "groundless and biased."

There is no doubt China has admitted to being caught with organs from state-executed prisoners that have been sold to those in need, Zaltzman said. Earlier this month, China said it would phase out the practice of harvesting organs from executed inmates, starting in November.

"There has been a lot of pressure on China for them to stop doing this. The truth is, it seems to be happening less," Zaltzman said. "I can't imagine with what occurred with the boy had anything to do with the state. These are criminals doing something horrific."