Biography
Click to expand
María Amalia Matamoros Ramírez, MD, MSc, is a Costa Rican pediatric, hepatobiliary, and liver transplant surgeon, and the founder and director of the first liver transplant program in Costa Rica. Over a career spanning more than two decades she has been a pioneer of pediatric and living donor liver transplantation in her country, an international leader in transplantation ethics, and an advocate for equitable access to transplantation.
She earned her Doctor of Medicine and specialized in Pediatric Surgery at the University of Costa Rica, graduating with honors. Given the limited opportunities in her region, she pursued advanced training through clinical fellowships at Kobe Children's Hospital and Hyogo College of Medicine, and a clinical and research fellowship in immunology and transplantation at Kyoto University, Japan; a fellowship in hepatobiliary surgery and transplantation at Georg-August University Göttingen, Germany; and the international Master's programme in Organ, Tissue, and Cell Donation and Transplantation through Spain's Organización Nacional de Trasplantes (ONT). She also holds an MSc in Bioethics from the Universidad Nacional and the Universidad de Costa Rica.
Dr. Matamoros established and led liver transplantation at both Hospital México and the Hospital Nacional de Niños within Costa Rica's social security system (CCSS), developing national hepatobiliary and transplant services and training the multidisciplinary teams and surgeons who continue this work today. She has served as Medical Director of Hospital Clínica UNIBE and as a member of the National Transplant Regulatory Commission; early in her career she was medical director of a UNHCR refugee camp in Guanacaste.
She is internationally recognized for her defense of ethical transplantation: she took an early and principled stand against organ trafficking in Costa Rica and the wider region — work that contributed to the dismantling of an international trafficking network and for which she endured sustained institutional resistance. She has consistently championed transparency in organ allocation, continuity of transplant services, and the rights of transplant patients.
She holds prominent international leadership roles, including Co-Chair and Executive Board member of the Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group (DICG) and President (2022–2023) of the Sociedad de Trasplantes de América Latina y el Caribe (STALYC). Her scholarship spans living donor transplantation, biliary complications, split-liver transplantation, and the development and ethics of transplant programmes across Latin America, with publications in Transplantation, World Journal of Surgery, and JAMA, among others.
Recognized as one of the pioneers of liver transplantation in Central America, and as one of very few women liver transplant surgeons in her region, Dr. Matamoros has built lasting national transplant capacity, advanced ethical practice internationally, and served as a role model and mentor for the next generation of surgeons. She has also played an active role in mentoring the development of liver transplant programs in Nicaragua, Honduras & Dominican republic by exchange visits, training and collaboration.
