Prevalence of diabetes is linked to the high demand for organ donation

According to the Coordinator of Evaluation of the Department of Surgery in the FM, this creates a worrying scenario because it exceeds the possibilities of care with other resources, because although there is a high demand for organ donation, the rate of donations is low.

Mexico, a country with extremely low rates of organ donation

Mexico is one of the countries in the world with the lowest levels of organ donation, despite the fact that these interventions are, on many occasions, the only way out left for patients with chronic degenerative diseases, says the expert.

These are the figures for Mexico compared to other Latin American nations in terms of transplants

	Mexico Records	global records
Cadaveric type donation	3.78 per million inhabitants	9.5 per million inhabitants in Latin America 73.8 per million inhabitants in Spain and the US.
Kidney transplant rate	22.4 per million inhabitants	37.1 per million in Argentina 44.3 per million in Uruguay
Authorized transplant centers	273 centers	59 in Argentina Three in Uruguay

According to Sánchez Ramírez, the cost of the procedure and supplies to obtain a kidney from a deceased person in Mexico was, until a few years ago, approximately 13,000 pesos. while for a living human being, about 130,000 pesos.

The urgency of better donation centers in the country to prevent diabetes

From the perspective of the specialist, the increase in organ transplants could help prevent deaths from diabetes, so better plans are needed to carry out these procedures since the problem is not in the lack of authorized centers.

“There is no quality monitoring in which the processes to obtain organs are seen and evaluated, to see where the problem is stuck. There are no quality programs”

Omar Sanchez Ramirez

In Spain there is “a single health system and hospitals have been identified where they can obtain organ donations, for example, those that treat traumatology,” says the university student. In addition, he highlights that there are multidisciplinary teams in charge of these processes, infrastructure and personnel to carry out the required studies at the time it occurs. 

Mexico has more donation centers than Spain, of which the La Raza National Medical Center stands out, where the largest number of heart transplants are performed in our country, as well as the Civil Hospital of Guadalajara and the Siglo XXI National Medical Center.

“You have the license, but very little is done, in such a way that there are hospitals that do not report donations or transplants over the years.”

Omar Sanchez Ramirez

The lack of a culture of organ donation

If the problem around the prevalence of diabetes is not the lack of medical centers, the Coordinator of Evaluation of the Department of Surgery attributes the problem to the lack of donation culture, which could lower the rates of diabetic people in the country.

“The family’s response to the donation request is just one step in a series of very important steps. That of the family is the supposed culture, but the rest is up to the structure, the organization and the policies to attend a program”.

Experts from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) are searching for a functional organ transplant system to solve problems that arise as a result of the low levels in which our country finds itself.