Blood, Above Pesos, Proves a Lifeline for Those in Need

MEXICO CITY Silent figures filled every plastic seat under the dim fluorescent lights. Two men slumped on the tile floor in the corner, heads buried in their knees. A rattly cough was the only sound.

It was 7 a.m. in Xoco Hospital, where uninsured Mexicans pay for medical services, quite literally, with blood.

Bernaben Ruiz, a 23-year-old busboy, rubbed his red-rimmed eyes and studied the little prick mark at the crook of his right arm.

"It wasn't so bad," he said.

The little bag of blood Ruiz had just given up would pay for the Caesarean section that made his friend a father, and it was part of an elemental ritual of life here. In Mexico, patients who have no health insurance or who are covered by bare-bones government plans are required to recruit two to six blood donors -- friends, relatives, even total strangers -- in order to receive free or discounted medical care.

It is an obligation accepted matter-of-factly. Nearly half of the population had no health insurance in 2005, and almost everyone -- except for the estimated 5 percent of the population that can afford deluxe private insurance -- can readily spool off a list of surgeries that their blood has made possible.

At Xoco Hospital, the minutes passed in drowsy silence. The clock said 7:45 a.m., and Ruiz was still waiting for his post-donation consultation.

It was so quiet that no one could miss the weeping that soon grew into great, belly-heaving sobs just down the hall. A hushed semicircle formed around a man in a baseball cap, a man overwrought with grief.

"Please," the man said, "I beg your support."

Carlos Reyes had brought friends to Xoco to give pints of blood following the car accident that crumpled his father's body. But that didn't seem important anymore. A man in a white coat had told him his father was gone. All Reyes could think about now was the money he needed to take his father home to be buried in Cuernavaca, 55 miles south of Mexico City.

A small woman stepped toward Reyes and handed him a coin. "Bless you," he said.

By 8 a.m., the long corridor could no longer hold the dozens of blood donors who shouldered in alongside patients awaiting orthopedic examinations and plaster casts.