WORLD NEWS – MEXICO: Mexico confronts a critical shortfall in organ and tissue donation that leaves patients waiting and families facing impossible choices. With a national donation rate of just 4.3 donors per million inhabitants, Viridiana Cueva Sánchez, the organ and tissue donation coordinator for Hospital General de Zona No. 11 of the Mexican Social Security Institute in Xalapa, Veracruz, warns that misinformation and lack of outreach are primary drivers of the low culture of donation. She says education should begin in primary schools to dismantle myths and build a generation that understands the lifesaving potential of transplantation.
The report lays out the stark anatomy of donation: living donors who are healthy and compatible can give blood, bone marrow, a kidney, or a fragment of liver; patients who suffer cardiac arrest can be tissue donors providing bone and skin; and donors declared brain-dead can enable full organ transplantation. A single brain-dead donor can provide lungs, a heart, both kidneys, a liver and a pancreas — potentially saving the lives of up to eight people — while tissue donations of skin, bone and ligaments can improve the quality of life for more than fifty recipients.
Mexico’s transplant infrastructure is described as organized but stretched. The IMS coordinates a national hospital network with more than 90 donation coordinators across public and private institutions to move organs swiftly to transplant centers. The Hospital de Alta Especialidad in the city of Veracruz performs kidney transplants, yet the state lists roughly 500 patients waiting for a kidney, underscoring the gap between need and available organs.
Families remain central to the process: those who decide in life to donate must inform their relatives, as authorization at the time of death is given by family members. The nation marks September 26 as National Day of Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation to honor donors and encourage participation. For further information, the National Transplant Center provides resources and guidance to those seeking to learn more about donation and transplantation.
