Two Mexican medics ridiculed for dropping a human heart while it was being transported to a hospital for a transplant can breathe a little more easily after the recipient, Erika Hernandez, was discharged from hospital.

The men were widely lampooned after they spilled the contents of a cooler box containing the organ while rushing to the La Raza hospital in Mexico City two weeks ago. But the operation went ahead as planned and proved successful. "I cannot believe that I'm still here and well," Hernandez said. "It is thanks to the person who donated the heart I can be here."

Dr Jaime Saldivar said Hernandez does not know that the accident made international news, adding that it would be up to her family to tell her.

Hernandez, who was born with a congenital heart defect, was one of three transplant patients at a press conference to help boost organ donation. The 27-year-old hair stylist left hospital in a wheelchair but looked rosy-cheeked as she addressed reporters.

Erika Hernandez waves as she leaves hospital

The heart was donated by 20-year-old Rafael Gomez, who was declared brain dead after he was involved in a car crash.

Watching TV cameras captured the moment that one of the medics stumbled as he left the helicopter in his haste to get to the hospital after the heart was flown in from León, in the state of Guanajuato. The bagged heart rolled out on to the concrete, along with ice and a bag of saline.

But the organ was protected in a waterproof steel container so the medics were able to retrieve it without exposure to the outside environment before rushing it to the hospital where the four-hour operation was carried out.