With his team's 5-1 victory over Spain, Hector Sanchez can truly say he has become an international soccer champion, albeit not in the way he had dreamed of as a child. .
The Chilean car salesman was diagnosed with liver disease when he was young, and for many years his doctors advised him not to drive.
Since then, Sanchez has undergone two liver transplants and, along with a team of 20 other organ donors, won the Transplant Soccer World Cup in September.
Photo: AFP
“If it wasn't for the transplant, I might not be here,” he said after a recent charity match in Chile's capital Santiago.
He wants to extend this opportunity to others, and although the Chilean national team won the Transplant World Cup, the domestic situation is difficult for other teams in the same position. Despite progressive legislation on the issue, organ donation rates lag.
For Sanchez, 31, promoting organ donation through sport is a way to reward “a second chance at life.”
A 2010 reform aimed at promoting organ donation changed the law to consider all adults as putative donors unless they actively opt out.
But many people still refuse, with Chile's transplant rate at 10 per million people, about half that of regional leader Uruguay (19.7 per million).
The EU's donor rate is 20.9 per million people, while world leader Spain's is 48.9.
Part of the problem lies in the law. In Chile, only people who are brain dead are considered eligible to donate, unlike in Spain, where organs can be donated from people who have recently died, such as those who died suddenly of a heart attack.
Another part of the problem is cultural, with families often refusing to allow doctors to harvest viable organs for transplant from a deceased loved one.
“Many people believe that, but [the corpse] “The eyes will be gouged out” and the body will be left desecrated, said Ruth Leyva, head of San Jose Hospital's transplant department.
Currently, around 2,200 people are on the waiting list for organ transplants in Chile, and Sánchez was one of them for many years.
He suffered from liver complications from birth and needed a transplant by the time he was a teenager, but he was only able to receive one when he was 24.
“You start anew, it's your second chance. For me, it was like that both physically and emotionally,” he said.
On the field, the only thing that distinguishes his amateur team from other players are the scars hidden under their jerseys.
It uses no special protection and does not require any special rules.
“When I step on the field, I forget everything. I'm just a normal person and the happiest person,” Sanchez said.
