Baja California Health Secretary Adrián Medina Amarillas announced Wednesday that the state’s combined public and private health sector has completed 500 organ transplants over the past five years. The milestone covers procedures performed across hospitals throughout the state, including facilities in Tijuana, Mexicali, and Ensenada.
Medina Amarillas framed the achievement as part of the essential public health functions assigned to the Secretaría de Salud de Baja California, the state health ministry. The announcement comes as Mexico continues restructuring its national health system, a process that has affected service delivery across the country’s 32 states.
Transplant Capacity in a Border State
Baja California’s border location has long made it a center for medical services in northwestern Mexico. Tijuana in particular hosts a significant number of private hospitals and clinics that serve both Mexican patients and medical tourists from the United States. The state’s transplant total of 500 procedures in five years averages roughly 100 per year across all facilities.
For comparison, the Canadian province of British Columbia, with a population roughly 40 percent larger than Baja California’s 3.8 million residents, performed 481 organ transplants in the single year of 2024. The contrast points to the ongoing gap in transplant infrastructure between Mexico and wealthier nations.
National Health System Changes Add Uncertainty
Mexico’s federal government has been transitioning its public health system from the former Seguro Popular model to the IMSS-Bienestar program, run by the Mexican Social Security Institute. That transition has created administrative disruptions in several states, particularly in the availability of specialized services like organ transplantation.
State health ministries, including Baja California’s, have taken on a larger coordination role during this period. Medina Amarillas positioned the transplant numbers as evidence that the state can maintain complex medical programs despite the federal restructuring.
Organ transplantation in Mexico is regulated by CENATRA (Centro Nacional de Trasplantes), the national transplant center, which maintains the country’s waiting list and donor registry. Patients in Baja California who need a transplant may receive organs from donors anywhere in Mexico through this national system.
The announcement was first reported by Zeta Tijuana.