Cuenca Man Receives Kidney Transplant After Four Years on the Waiting List

A Cuenca man received a kidney transplant after waiting four years, in a case that highlights both the work of the transplant team and the scale of organ-donation demand in Ecuador.

Jorge Carpio Torres, 39, from Quingeo, received the transplant on June 16, 2026, at Hospital Jose Carrasco Arteaga. The hospital is part of the IESS system, and the operation was carried out after Carpio had spent four years on the waiting list.

A long wait ends in Cuenca

According to the report, Carpio entered the operating room at 11:00 p.m. The transplant surgeon, Dr. Patricio Martinez, said a kidney-transplant operation generally takes between two and four hours.

The practical human detail is the length of the wait. The operation did not follow a short administrative sequence; it came after four years of waiting for a suitable organ and a medical team able to carry out the procedure.

For foreign residents who use Ecuadorian hospitals, the story is a reminder that the country's public health system includes specialized services that operate through accredited institutions. It is not a promise about eligibility or access for any individual patient, but it is useful local context when comparing healthcare options in Cuenca.

Azuay donation figures

The report also cites figures from Mario Herrera of INDOT, Ecuador's national transplant and donation authority. In Azuay, the donor registry includes 764,656 records. Of those, 539,334 were favorable to donation, a rate of 70.53%.

The Azuay rate is reported as 16.25 percentage points above the national average. That gap matters because the number of people willing to donate is one part of the system that determines whether patients waiting for an organ can eventually receive one.

The figures are not a forecast of how many transplants will happen in the province. They are a snapshot of registered donation preferences cited in the report.

The national waiting list

As of August 4, 2026, Ecuador had 2,482 people on the national transplant waiting list. The list included 1,355 renal patients and 1,096 cornea patients.

The same report says Ecuador carried out more than 10,000 transplants between 2007 and July 2026. Those totals include the broader national system, not only Hospital Jose Carrasco Arteaga or Azuay.

What this means locally

The story combines a personal result with a system-level signal: Cuenca has a hospital accredited for transplant activity, Azuay reports a comparatively high favorable-donation rate, and the national waiting list remains substantial. For residents, the useful takeaway is to keep learning how IESS, INDOT, and hospital referral pathways fit together before a medical emergency makes the process urgent.

Source: El Mercurio