The Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) needs a five-hectare land donation to build a full public hospital near Tijuana’s Santa Fe district, a fast-growing area of roughly 100,000 residents with no nearby emergency medical facility. Federal Deputy Gilberto Herrera said IMSS does not purchase land for new hospitals, so a donation from a federal, state, or municipal government entity is required before construction can move forward.
The nearest IMSS facility to Santa Fe sits 17 kilometers away. That distance proved fatal on March 6, when a three-year-old girl died after her mother could not reach a hospital in time because of severe traffic congestion on the roads leading out of the district.
Land Donation Model Already in Use
The land donation model is standard practice for IMSS construction projects across Mexico. Tijuana’s city government recently donated a plot in the Natura area for a separate IMSS-Bienestar hospital, and in Cozumel, Quintana Roo, the municipal government donated a five-hectare site for a hospital expansion earlier this year. Herrera pointed to the Natura deal as a template for what Santa Fe needs.
If no suitable five-hectare parcel can be found within Santa Fe itself, officials are looking at the nearby community of La Gloria. That area has ejido (communal) land that could potentially be transferred for the project. Ejido land requires a separate legal process to convert it for public use, which could add time to the timeline.
Private Landowner Offers a Site
A May 2025 report from Esquina 32 confirmed the hospital project has been authorized by IMSS. Desirée Sagarnaga, the IMSS delegate in Baja California, said a private landowner offered to donate a 60,000-square-meter parcel (six hectares) located in Rosarito, roughly 50 meters from the Tijuana municipal boundary. That offer is still under review.
In the meantime, a smaller preventive-care clinic under the Tijuana Saludable program has been announced for Santa Fe. The clinic will offer basic health services but will not function as an emergency facility. It cannot handle trauma cases, surgeries, or the kind of urgent care that residents currently must travel 17 kilometers to access.
Why Five Hectares?
A general hospital requires space for emergency rooms, operating theaters, imaging equipment, laboratories, parking, and future expansion. Five hectares (about 12.4 acres) is the standard IMSS footprint for a regional general hospital. Santa Fe’s dense residential development makes finding an open parcel of that size within the neighborhood itself a challenge.
The story was first reported by Punto Norte.