Dominican Republic Transplant Landscape: Living Donors Predominant, Deceased Donor Program Limited
November 12, 2025 — by Transplant News
WORLD NEWS – DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: The country’s transplant activity has been shaped overwhelmingly by living kidney donors, a practice that began in 1986 and now spans nearly four decades. That long-running living-donor program accounts for the majority of renal transplants performed, reflecting years of accumulated experience among surgical teams and referral networks focused on donor relatives and living volunteers.
In contrast, transplantation from deceased donors remains a much more recent and constrained chapter. Authorities mark the formal start of deceased-donor transplant activity in November 2007, a program now about 18 years old. Despite that milestone, procurement of organs from deceased donors has stayed at very low levels, and officials point to structural differences that set deceased donation apart from living donation in terms of logistics, coordination and institutional readiness.
The record also documents an early domestic liver transplant in March 2007 associated with the name Caraballo, carried out by a team and at a hospital that had prepared for that capability over a period of years. That case illustrates that individual surgical units can reach the technical threshold for complex procedures when training and institutional support align, even as nationwide systems for capturing deceased donors remain underdeveloped.
Voices within the sector are asking whether the nation is prepared to receive and integrate organs from deceased donors on a larger scale, highlighting the need to strengthen the capture process, expand infrastructure and adapt the different dynamics that deceased donation requires. The contrast between decades of living-donor practice and the limited, more recent deceased-donor activity frames the central challenge for transplant services moving forward, keeping organ transplantation at the forefront of the country’s medical agenda.
