The Government of Mexico presented this Tuesday a new national campaign to promote organ donation, highlighting the progress made in transplants and the capacity of the public health system to offer results comparable to international standards, reported the Secretary of Health, David Kershenobich.
“We are now able to carry out a campaign that assures people that the organ they are going to donate will have a good result,” said the official during the presidential press conference, when presenting the most recent data on transplants carried out in the country, mainly in public hospitals.
Kershenobich stressed that in the last 12 months “we have worked intensely on what has to do with organ transplants,” and highlighted that one of the key elements is the continuity of subsequent treatments.
“Each transplant that is performed requires immunosuppression and that has to continue for many years and no patient has lacked immunosuppression to maintain their organs,” he stated.
In the case of kidney transplant, he reported that “2,783 kidney transplants have been performed,” of which 2,126, 76%, were performed in public hospitals.
He also detailed that in five years 14,347 kidney transplants have been carried out, 10,104 of them were from living donors and 4,243 from deceased donors.
“With surgical treatment and medications that maintain immunosuppression, survival in a living donor transplant is 93.5% and 84.2% when the donor is from someone who had died.”
Likewise, he stressed that “every person who receives a kidney returns to a practically normal life.”
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Regarding liver transplants, he indicated that “during 2025, 245 liver transplants were performed and of them, 76% also occurred in public hospitals,” with a “five-year survival of 71.5%, which meets international standards.”
“A piece of liver is transplanted and in six months they have a normal liver, both the donor and the person who received the liver,” he noted.
Regarding heart transplants, Kershenobich pointed out that “46 heart transplants have been performed this year, including four dual transplants, that is, heart and kidney at the same time,” almost all in public hospitals, with a four-year survival of 62.9%.
The secretary emphasized the social impact of donation, ensuring that “a donor patient can save the lives of up to eight people, two kidneys, two lungs, one liver.”
The campaign, he explained, will seek to reduce waiting lists and strengthen citizen confidence in the system.
Kershenobich recalled that it is now possible to register as a voluntary donor through the National Transplant Center and stressed that there has also been “significant progress in the legislative aspects to increase organ donation.”
In Mexico, the transplant rate is close to 25 per million inhabitants, a low figure compared to global leading countries such as Spain and the United States, where there are more than 100 transplants per million inhabitants, according to data from the World Observatory of Donation and Transplantation and the ONT.
With information from EFE
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