La Olla Dam, site of screenings by the Guanajuato Film Festival.
Despite the logistics of holding a film festival during a pandemic, the Guanajuato International Film Festival (GIFF) has proven to be as resourceful and innovative as ever with the announcement of a new format for film-lovers it calls aquacinema.
The GIFF was to begin taking reservations on its website Friday for film screenings at the La Olla Dam, where a screen will be erected and 30 boats carrying up to four people each will moor in front of it to view a variety of films.
They will include morning children’s features starting at 10 a.m., films in competition and special programming with showings ending at midnight.
Buoys will be installed to ensure social distancing, food will be available on the pier in a dining area with capacity for 70 people, as well as picnic baskets attendees can take aboard with them.
The 23rd edition of the GIFF, one of the biggest film festivals in Latin America, was originally scheduled for July but was moved to September due to uncertainties resulting from the coronavirus pandemic and a need to adjust the format of screenings in order to comply with health protocols.
Traditional drive-in showings have been planned as well as virtual screenings to avoid crowds. Films will also be shown at picnic areas set up on golf courses with social distancing clearly demarcated. All films in competition will be made available online, as will between 40% and 50% of supplemental programming.
The full program for the GIFF will be made available on September 8, and the full festival will run September 18 through 27 with events in Irapuato, Guanajuato and San Miguel de Allende.
Parents of cancer victims block a street in Mexico City on Thursday.
Parents of children with cancer protested once again on Thursday to denounce long-running drug shortages.
A group of parents blocked the Circuito Interior freeway outside the National Medical Center La Raza in Mexico City for more than six hours from about 10:00 a.m. onwards.
Wearing white t-shirts emblazoned with the message, “Another day without chemo,” the parents rebuked the federal government for shortages they said have lasted for 672 days, or almost two years.
“We’ve gone months without cardioxane,” said María Vargas, referring to a drug used to protect the heart from the toxic side effects of chemotherapy medications.
“When we warned we’d protest, they miraculously administered the medication to our children … but the day after tomorrow there will be a shortage of another drug. We need permanent solutions,” she told the newspaper El Universal.
Aquilina Santos, the mother of a 13-year-old girl with ovarian cancer that has spread to her lungs and lymph nodes, said that her daughter was being treated with carboplatin instead of cisplatin, which was prescribed by her oncologist, due to a shortage of the latter.
“I’m not saying that it harms her, I don’t know, but that’s why I’m protesting,” she said.
Zenaida Ramírez, the mother of a 2-year-old boy with leukemia, said her son’s chemotherapy is sometimes delayed due to a shortage of the drugs he requires.
Abigail Iturio Rodríguez, whose 5-year-old son died from leukemia last week, told the newspaper Reforma that a shortage of drugs forced the cancelation of his scheduled chemotherapy appointments on five or six occasions.
Over the past two years, there have been shortages of mercaptopurine and cyclophosphamide among other cancer drugs, she said, adding that accessing medications for nausea has also been difficult.
Iturio said that she couldn’t be sure that the irregular supply of drugs caused her son’s death but she believes that the lack of continuity in his treatment may have been a factor in the relapse he suffered in early August.
“He was my first and only child. He didn’t want any more jabs, he didn’t want any more pain. He wanted to go to the beach [but] unfortunately we weren’t able to make his dream come true, he left us too soon,” she said.
Iturio said that she joined Thursday’s protest to support other parents of children with cancer because they too could lose their sons and daughters if they don’t receive the treatment they need when they need it.
“My son taught me to fight, to bear everything because he put up with everything,” she said. “He drives me [to fight] so that children aren’t left without chemotherapy. … My son [died], tomorrow it could be more children.”
As Thursday’s protest was taking place, another group of parents met with Zoé Robledo, director of the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), and other government officials.
The institute, a major health care provider, announced late on Thursday that it had reached an agreement with the parents that included the creation of a working group that will meet weekly.
IMSS also said in a statement that it would place a “public platform” online to “monitor the timely delivery … of oncological treatments for pediatric patients treated at the institute.”
Parents have protested life-saving cancer drug shortages on numerous occasions since last year.
The Health Ministry made a commitment in May to end the shortages of several cancer medications that have plagued child cancer patients but more than three months later the problem has not been fully resolved.
President López Obrador said at the time that the agreement would allow Mexico to obtain high quality medications and equipment all over the world at low prices and thus put an end to shortages.
The 2020 version of the Day of the Dead Barbie doll.
With Day of the Dead looming, toy-maker Mattel has announced the release of the 2020 version of Day of the Dead Barbie after last year’s debut edition sold out.
The dolls and their clothing are exquisitely crafted, with an attention to detail that far surpasses that of a normal Barbie doll. And so does the price. These collectors’ editions are designed for adults and marketed at US $75. Versions of the 2019 model can be found through private parties on the internet for US $170 or more.
Last year’s Catrina wore a black mermaid-cut dress with elaborate embroidery featuring flowers, lace and butterfly appliqués.
This year’s dress is blush-colored, with a pearl-laden bustier and a bell-shaped satin skirt embroidered with skulls and flowers in pink, gold and blue partially topped by a lace overlay.
The Day of the Dead Barbie’s face is painted with the delicate patterns of a sugar skull and her hair is tressed into long braids reminiscent of Frida Kahlo. A flowered headband composed of skeletal hands cradling roses and marigolds is perched on her forehead and in her ears she wears large gold earrings with stylized skulls. On her feet is a pair of golden, peep-toe pumps.
Mattel’s Barbie Catrina, ready for Day of the Dead 2020.
Even the box is representative of the event with drawings of brightly colored papel picado, or cut paper. A large portrait of Day of the Dead Barbie graces one side of the packaging, while on the other is a description of the Day of the Dead as well as Barbie’s costume and accessories in English and Spanish.
“My hope for these dolls is that they’re able to bring more awareness to the Día de Muertos celebration,” the doll’s designer, Javier Meabe, explained. “I also know how important representation is in our community, and I wanted little girls to see themselves through this doll. Barbie has always been a doll that celebrates women and dreams, and inspires girls. I am beyond grateful that Barbie is now celebrating traditions and cultures that mean so much to so many people.”
The Day of the Dead Barbie 2020 is available for pre-order on the Barbie website as part of its collection of signature dolls. The doll will not ship until October 2, and purchases are limited to one per customer.
Deputy Minister Suárez: quality food was exported, junk food was imported.
A high-ranking agriculture official blames neoliberalism for Mexico’s high levels of junk food consumption and resulting high levels of obesity.
Speaking at the Health Ministry’s coronavirus press briefing on Thursday night, Deputy Agriculture Minister Víctor Suárez Carrera said the adoption of a neoliberal economic model by successive governments in the 36-year period between 1982 and 2018 led to Mexicans favoring imported junk food over local, healthier products.
“In summary we can say that the neoliberal model imposed food imperialism, a colonization of our palates,” he said.
Suárez, who urged citizens to eat a healthy diet made up of locally-produced foods, said Mexican-made products have been devalued in recent decades.
“All the agricultural systems, … all the foods [and] all the beverages that are the result of rural and indigenous agricultural cultures were devalued,” he said.
Many people reached the conclusion that locally-produced foods are a relic of the past and must be substituted, the official said.
Suárez charged that during the “neoliberal” period, Mexico’s agricultural system was altered to satisfy the needs of export markets rather than those of the local population.
“Quality foods, fruit and vegetables, were exported, and the dietary model of junk food and sugary drinks was imported,” he said.
The entry into force of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, in 1994 is often cited as a major reason why Mexicans began eating more unhealthy food and drinking more soft drinks. The prevalence of diet-related chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity significantly increased as a result.
In recent months, health officials and President López Obrador have blamed Mexico’s high Covid-19 death toll on the high levels of chronic disease and urged Mexicans to reconsider their diets.
In a sermon-like video message in June, López Obrador said that people should be eating more corn, beans, seasonal fruit and fish and less meat from animals that have been fattened up with hormones. He offered similar advice in his second annual report to the nation this week.
Suárez said last night that a return to healthy eating is possible because many nutritious foods are still being produced in the Mexican countryside.
Bautista and a mushroom of the high Mixteca region of Oaxaca.
Mushrooms aren’t just mushrooms in the High Mixteca region of Oaxaca.
Not only are wild mushrooms that pop up every rainy season in the forests in the state’s northwest a highly valued food source, some are also prized for their medicinal qualities and are used in sacred rituals.
One person who has dedicated a quarter of her short life to promoting knowledge and understanding of Mixteca region mushrooms is 20-year-old Belén Bautista Quitoz.
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Since the age of 15, Bautista, a Ñuu Saavi Mixtec woman, has spent time learning about the mushrooms that grow around her home town of San Esteban Atatlahuca and encouraging and helping others do the same.
Some 250 different species of mushrooms, including poisonous ones, grow in the High Mixteca, ranging from tiny specimens to true giants. Some have curious colloquial names such as the hongo de aguacate, or avocado mushroom, and the yema de huevo, or egg yolk, so named due to its golden yellow color.
Bautista with a particularly large mushroom in a forest near her home.
After three years organizing an annual wild mushroom fair in Atatlahuca, in 2019 Bautista came up with a new idea to promote and educate people about the region’s myriad fungi and thus turned her focus to the creation of a Mixteca “mushroom route.”
It quickly became a reality.
“A year ago [we created] our first route,” Bautista told the newspaper El Universal, explaining that it ran through several towns, where visitors could purchase wild mushrooms and learn more about them.
The plan for 2020 was to extend the route to more municipalities in the region but the coronavirus pandemic changed that, she explained.
Many municipalities shut themselves off to outsiders so Bautista decided to continuing working close to home, organizing mushroom-themed events in and around Atatlahuca for other fungus aficionados and helping local mushroom vendors promote their product.
“It’s been very nice. We created a [new mushroom] route but it was much more local. … We know that people want to come [to travel the route] but that’s complicated” at the moment due to the pandemic, she said.
Mushroom harvest in the High Mixteca.
Bautista said creation of the route and the mushroom-themed events and activities she has organized have made people more aware of the need to preserve the local forests where the fungi grow. She also said that young people have become more interested in conserving the ancestral knowledge of the Mixtec people after learning about the different uses of wild mushrooms.
The pandemic might have stopped the expansion of the Mixteca mushroom route this year but it couldn’t stop the unique fungi of the high Mixteca emerging from beneath the Earth when the rains began in June. And it couldn’t stop Bautista’s passion for the wild mushrooms endemic to the region nor her enthusiasm for sharing her knowledge with others.
Look out for a bigger and better Mixteca mushroom route in 2021.
National Guardsmen on patrol in Antonio Barona, Cuernavaca.
A turf war has turned Cuernavaca, Morelos, into a battlefield as criminal organizations associated with La Familia Michoacana and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) wreak havoc in the City of Eternal Spring.
“The situation of violence that has occurred in recent days is the result of the struggle between antagonistic groups … that seek to control actions in different neighborhoods of the municipality,” the Morelos Public Safety Commission posted on Facebook Thursday.
Rival gangs have pledged allegiance to national criminal organizations as they struggle for dominance, according to an internal report by the commission, and the resulting violence has left the city reeling.
One of those gangs is Los Colombianos, which is allied with the CJNG. It is thought to have been responsible for Tuesday night’s mass shooting in the crime-ridden Antonio Borona neighborhood in which nine people were killed and 14 injured as they attended the wake of a teenager killed in a motorcycle accident.
State Public Security Commissioner José Antonio Ortiz Guarneros likened the attack to an act of terrorism because the gunmen fired indiscriminately in an effort to kill everyone present. A witness said the attackers didn’t stop shooting until they ran out of bullets. More than 60 casings were found at the scene.
Since the shooting, the military, National Guard, and state and municipal police have had a heavy presence in the area, anticipating an act of vengeance, but even heightened security could not deter the violence.
Just before 1 p.m. on Thursday, witnesses say, a man emerging from a taxi in La Barona was shot dead by assailants on a motorcycle who then shot the taxi driver, who was hospitalized for his injuries.
The murdered passenger was rumored to be a Los Colombianos loan shark. Los Mayas, a criminal syndicate affiliated with La Familia Michoacana, are thought to be behind yesterday’s shootings as revenge for Tuesday night’s attack.
Police say ballistics from casings recovered Tuesday night match other shootings linked to the gang, which is led by Francisco Rodríguez Hernández, alias “El Señorón.”
A video circulating on social media depicting a member of Los Colombianos being kicked in the face while handcuffed by an unseen captor seems to corroborate the authorities’ conclusion.
“I am Omar Moreno Rojas. This happened to me because I was working with … Francisco Javier Rodríguez Hernández, because I was being an asshole to the people of Morelos. I belong to El Señorón. We are dedicated to kidnapping, to extortion. He makes truces with people and betrays them in the end. We were the ones who killed,” the bloodied man says.
Police believe the house where Tuesday’s funeral was held had previously been used as a drug lab by Los Mayas, which was formed out of the ashes of the Beltrán Leyva cartel and is led by Abel Maya Domínguez.
On Wednesday, the president of the Morelos Bar Association and former state attorney general José Luis Urióstegui Salgado said the governor and security commissioner were incapable and uninterested in fighting crime and should be removed from office.
In the past four days, 10 people have been shot dead and at least 15 injured in Cuernavaca.
A double layer of clothing under the central Mexico sun, along with this infuriating face mask that I am diligently wearing, are creating little waves of heat that roll over me. A full body suit and gloves also make a camera, voice recorder and cell phone pretty difficult to manage.
But as the hive opens any annoyance drifts away.
Hundreds of tiny bees buzz so intensely I can hear them as if they were inside my chest. Dante Moreno from Abejas de Barrio is gently smoking an open hive to calm the bees so we can get a closer look at what is going on inside. Unlike the rest of us, he is only wearing a netted hat, his hands bare as he slides each wooden frame from the bee box to inspect it.
He’s marked the queens to be better able to find them at a glance and with his bare hand picks her up to show us the difference in her size from the other worker bees. He places a little honey on her wings and she shuffles in a slow sticky walk across the wooden lid.
It’s not often that you get to up close and personal with honeybees. In fact, as members of our morning tour are discussing, when Africanized bees were discovered in Chiapas in the 1980s, the fear of this aggressive hybrid bee tarnished the pollinators’ reputation throughout Mexico, leading to popular campaigns to destroy hives found in urban areas.
Moreno checks the hives for production levels and any viruses among the bees.
“It became ‘cool’ to be afraid of bees,” says one of the women in the group.
But an intimate look at a beehive and the incredible ingenuity and coordination of the bees will set you to thinking about these small and important creatures.
Eighty-seven percent of all flowering plants are pollinated by animals and among them bees are the main pollinators. That’s about two-thirds of the cultivated crops that are used to feed the world. Without bees we humans would be in serious trouble trying to feed ourselves, not to mention the loss of biodiversity that might mean the destruction of cures and vaccines for diseases yet to come.
But despite their vital importance, disappearing they are at an estimated decline of 30%-50% yearly in the past several years (a normal year’s winter loss is around 10%-15%). The rising loss of bees worldwide is blamed on a lot of factors. Air and water pollution, the destruction of habitat, rising temperatures due to climate change and intensive, pesticide-heavy, mono-crop agriculture are a few.
A 2018 study looked at the previously unknown effects of glyphosate, commercially known as Roundup weed killer, on honeybees and found that the herbicide changes the gut bacteria in bees in such a way that it makes them susceptible to harmful pathogens and impairs their spatial processing. This means they have a harder time getting back to their hives, finding flowers they’ve scouted and staying healthy. The researchers believe this may be contributing to the collapse of colonies worldwide.
If you are paying attention to the news you know that the Mexican Ministry of Environment has urged that the use of glyphosate be phased out over the next few years. (A presidential decree is expected soon, according to the outgoing minister of environment.) It’s a strong step in the right direction. Still, other issues may be a bit more complicated to resolve and Mexico City beekeepers are living in a microcosm of those worldwide factors.
Sandra Corales dresses an adventurous tour-goer on a visit to their 27 hives.
To reach the 27 hives managed by Abejas de Barrio requires a watery journey. The project, run by Sandra Corales, rents a small chinampa in the southern canal system of Mexico City near Xochimilco. The bees they are raising are Apis mellifera, sometimes called the western bee, that were imported into Mexico in the 19th century by Europeans as the original bees of the chinampas are pollinators but don’t produce honey.
The Abejas de Barrio project is an offshoot of Corales’ early work assisting other local beekeepers, which she did until she was able to set up her own hives and start producing her own honey. Raising bees in the chinampas has its own unique difficulties. Among the greatest is the nearby human population.
We pass a local woman and after a few pleasantries she starts to tell Corales about seeing some bees in the area, a decidedly nervous tinge to her voice.
“But you just saw one?” asked Corales. “Or you saw a hive? Did you see a lot of bees in one place?”
Corales does her best to reassure her neighbor that they are taking all the necessary precautions to make sure their bees are mellow and happy and to keep them from people’s fields and homes. The woman doesn’t look completely convinced, but says she will let her know if she sees them again.
“That must happen all the time,” I say.
Abejas de Barrio is one of the few beekeeping projects in Mexico City’s southern canals.
“Yep,” says Corales with a sigh.
It’s hard to maintain a balance between humans and nature. As the city encroaches on the chinampas, an area historically agricultural, that balance is constantly put to the test. While this area is one of the greenest and wildest within the capital, the bees still lack for sufficient food sources and Abejas de Barrio “feeds” its bees with sugar water to keep up production.
According to Moreno and Corales, once upon a time beekeepers could once harvest twice a year in the chinampas, but now it’s only once. In Yucatán, which is the largest producer of honey in the country, beekeepers can harvest up to 10 times a year.
“I would love to see this area reforested, with native plants and flowers,” says Corales wistfully, but unfortunately, the opposite is happening.
Despite its protected status, this area of the city is often neglected by its own residents and the local government. The waters of the canals are extremely polluted from illegal dumping and poor water filtration. Corales says they have plans to install a drinking fountain for the bees to provide them with purified water.
Despite the complications, Abejas de Barrio is working to encourage more people to get interested in bees and beekeeping, hoping that will be one way to safeguard their existence. They offer workshops on everything from sustainable beekeeping to making your own beeswax lip balm and they also offer tours, similar to the one we are taking today.
Guests receive a formal honey tasting aboard a trajinera boat and then zip up into individual bee suits to get up close and personal with the hives.
The hope is that these experiences will give people a greater understanding about bees while at the same time support the local economy and the continuation of the project. At the very minimum, a visit to the bees offers an opportunity to see their unique watery environment and leaves an impression not soon forgotten – your head will be buzzing for hours.
Lydia Carey is a regular contributor to Mexico News Daily.
Mexico has formally apologized for the government’s role in the killing of 45 indigenous people in Acteal, Chiapas, in 1997.
The apology is part of a friendly settlement agreement in which Mexico has pledged to offer reparations to families of the victims. They will include scholarships, paving roads, improvements to medical facilities, the construction of water and electrical infrastructure, creating a documentary of the events surrounding the attack and financial compensation to victims’ family members.
The government’s admission of guilt comes nearly 23 years after the December 22, 1997, massacre, in which paramilitary groups brutally killed members of a Tzotzil Mayan pacifist organization known as Las Abejas (The Bees), supporters of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, as they sought refuge in a church.
Pregnant women had their abdomens opened with bayonets and the fetuses ripped from womb while still alive. Eighteen children were among the dead.
The gunmen numbered more than 100 paramilitaries, adherents of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who were armed and trained by the Mexican army.
After the massacre, soldiers were called in to remove the bodies of the dead in the predawn hours before the media arrived, evidence was tampered with and the mass slaughter was officially dismissed by the federal government as inter-communal violence.
The Ministry of the Interior’s human rights point man, Alejandro Encinas, offered the apology, which was translated into Tzotzil and delivered to a room filled with family members of the victims.
“On behalf of the Mexican state, we assume responsibility for the unfortunate acts against the Acteal community on December 22, 1997,” he said, offering “a public apology to the victims, to their families, to the Acteal community and to the Tzotzil people for this deep injury. We do it with conviction and without conditions; we do it because of the omissions and negligence of the Mexican state.”
The head of the ministry’s human rights defense unit, Aarón Mastache Mondragón, noted that the signed agreement contains four reparation measures that will be implemented through 25 actions as compensation.
“The act of recognition and the signing of the agreement represents an emblematic event. It reflects the commitment of the government of Mexico to seek and implement friendly solutions as a vehicle to achieve unity and peace,” he said.
On behalf of the survivors and relatives of the victims, Las Abejas spokesman Fernando Luna Pérez accepted the public apology, because “the Tzotzil people have a huge heart, we are a people of peace,” he said.
Luna also requested a trial for the massacre’s intellectual authors, citing former president Ernesto Zedillo’s role as the mastermind of “a crime against humanity,” as well as other high-ranking government officials at the state and federal levels.
The worst-case scenario assumes that face mask usage remains at current rates.
In a worst-case scenario, Covid-19 will claim the lives of more than 157,000 people in Mexico by January 1, according to new projections by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).
The University of Washington-based institute modeled three scenarios for individual nations and the world as a whole.
The worst-case scenario assumes that face mask usage remains at current rates and that authorities continue easing social distancing requirements.
The best-case scenario assumes that mask usage is near universal and that authorities impose stricter coronavirus restrictions if the daily death toll exceeds eight per million inhabitants. In Mexico, eight deaths per million equates to about 1,000 fatalities, a figure that has only been exceeded on a single day twice.
Finally, a most likely scenario assumes that individual mask use and other mitigation measures remain unchanged in the final months of 2020.
Covid-19 deaths as of Thursday. milenio
The IHME predicts that Covid-19 deaths in Mexico will increase to 157,264 by January 1 in a worst-case scenario, 130,545 in a best-case scenario and 138,828 in the most likely scenario.
In the worst-case and most likely scenarios, Mexico’s official death toll – currently 66,329 – more than doubles over the next four months. In the best-case scenario, it increases 97% by January 1.
In the worst case, Mexico will rank sixth in the world for total Covid-19 deaths at the end of the year, the IHME predicts, whereas in the other two scenarios it will rank fourth.
In all three scenarios, the institute predicts that India will have recorded the highest number of Covid-19 deaths at the end of 2020 – it currently ranks third – and that the United States will rank second.
Globally, the IHME predicts 4 million total deaths by the end of the year in a worst-case scenario (the current death toll is about 870,000), 2 million in a best-case scenario and 2.8 million in a most likely scenario.
It said that there is likely to be a seasonal rise in Covid-19 cases in northern hemisphere countries in the late fall and winter months.
Coronavirus cases and deaths reported by day. milenio
The IHME said that its projections are based on an epidemiological model that includes data on cases, deaths, and antibody prevalence, as well as location-specific Covid-19 testing rates, mobility, social distancing mandates, mask use, population density and age structure, and pneumonia seasonality.
The testing rate in Mexico is extremely low – fewer than 11,000 people per million inhabitants have been tested to date – meaning that data for both coronavirus cases and deaths is widely considered to be grossly inaccurate.
Some epidemiologists believe that Mexico’s real Covid-19 death toll could be three times higher than that reported, in which case total fatalities would have already exceeded the IHME’s worst-case scenario forecast.
Although new case numbers have declined in recent weeks, according to official data, health authorities are continuing to report more than 500 deaths on a daily basis.
The Health Ministry reported 513 additional fatalities on Thursday, lifting the official death toll to 66,329. The accumulated case tally rose to 616,894 with 5,937 new cases registered.
The Health Ministry estimates that there are 39,940 cases across the country while the results of 83,820 tests are not yet known.
The business magazine Forbes reported Thursday that, according to Mexico’s publicly available epidemiological oversight database, only 20% of Covid-19 patients who died were connected to a ventilator. That means that more than 50,000 patients who died were never intubated.
“Right now in Mexico thousands of Covid-19 patients are dying every week without access to the type of delicate intensive care that could have saved their lives,” Forbes said.
Doctors in Monterrey, Nuevo León, have performed Mexico’s first double lung transplant for a Covid-19 patient.
A 57-year-old man whose lungs were severely damaged by the infectious disease received the new organs during a six-hour operation at the Christus Muguerza hospital on August 31 and September 1.
It was just the fourth double lung transplant for a coronavirus patient anywhere in the world and the first in both Mexico and Latin America.
Before his operation, the patient was connected to an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, machine for 50 days as he waited for a donor.
His lungs were so badly damaged as a result of contracting the coronavirus and developing Covid-19 about two months ago that he would have died had he been placed on a ventilator rather than an ECMO machine, said Ángel Martínez Vela, medical director of the Christus Muguerza hospital.
Martínez told the newspaper Milenio that the recovering patient will remain in the hospital for at least two weeks because his new lungs are still 20% dependent on the ECMO machine.
He said it was too soon to consider the double lung transplant a success, explaining that while the operation is an “important step,” the post-surgery phase is just as or even more complicated. It remains to be seen whether the patient’s body will accept or reject the new lungs, Martínez said.
A large medical team including surgeons, anesthetists, perfusionists and nurses worked together to perform the lung transplant operation, which began late on August 31 and concluded in the early hours of September 1.
Martínez said that the Christus Muguerza hospital, a private facility, has the only active lung transplant program in the country, explaining that such operations have been completed successfully there for the past six years.
