GUATEMALA – Midwives

In the Quetzaltenango area of Guatemala are many rural communities where the Mayan dialect called Mam is spoken and few people speak Spanish. This lack of Spanish means that these communities do not have access to doctors, health visitors or midwives which results in many deaths of both new-born babies and mothers. ACAM is an association of some 70 ‘comadrones’ or midwives, who try to alleviate this problem by travelling through the rural areas providing midwifery services to the villagers as well as advising on other medical issues. They provide a medical lifeline for the villagers.

The Guatemalan Government provides no support to the ‘comadrones’, who themselves live in very basic housing. The purchase of even basic medical equipment is therefore financially out of reach for the midwives, so we are supplying funds for the purchase of basic medical equipment to allow them to continue their work in the villages of the Quetzaltenango region of Guatemala.

Funds for this project will be sent to Guatemala on 31 October 2019, so if you wish to donate specifically to this Project your donation must reach us before that date.

Completion Report:
Funds were supplied to ACAM in Guatemala in December 2019 and used for the purchase of birth kit items including delivery instruments, digital thermometers, electronic blood pressure devices, oxygen saturation monitors, fetal stethoscopes, measuring tape, sling baby scales breast and catheterisation models, ultrasound equipment and cloth bags.

It took until March 2020 to deliver all the equipment from the USA to Guatemala, at which time the Covdi-19 pandemic closed down the whole of Guatemala. Nevertheless, over the course of 2020 the midwives were trained, sometimes in small groups and on occasion by Zoom.

Eventually, despite the Covid problems, all the kits were distributed to the mid-wives by mid-December 2020. We hold a much more detailed report on this project; if interested to read this, please contact us.