Boca Costa Medical Mission is a group of medical clinics, maintained and staffed by medical missionaries that serve the Indigenous people of Southwestern Guatemala. The team has been working in Guatemala since 2003. The base clinic, in the village of Paquila, in the department of Sololá, is about 1 ½ hours south of Quetzaltenango and about 2 ½ hours west of Guatemala City.
The clinic in Paquila is open every Thursday and Friday. A new clinic in Xojola is open two days each month starting 2009. The other clinic locations are open when they host medical teams. The clinics draw from some 45 small villages. The population is indigenous Mayan. The primary language is Quiche although Spanish is also spoken.
The area, Boca Costa de Solola, is one of the poorest areas of Guatemala. It has one of the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in Guatemala. The climate is warm, with coffee and banana trees, sugar cane, corn and rubber trees. It is one of the neediest and the most beautiful places you haven’t yet fallen in love with.
They welcome Medical Teams to the Boca Costa. The experience that the teams have is worth the effort. There are areas in need of medical care that the team cannot get to because there are only two of them and the need is so great. Most teams come for one week. They try to pick two villages that they haven’t been to recently and have the team work in one of the villages for 3 days and the other 2 days.
The minimum size needed to come as a team is one doctor and two/three support people. It is good if at least one of the support people has some medical background. The ideal team is two/three doctors and a total team of ten or less. The clinics are very basic and they would expect to see about 30-40 people per doctor per day. The villages where they go mostly speak Quiche. They hire translators for Quiche/Spanish at no cost to the teams. Any Spanish/English translators will be paid for by the visiting team. Boca Costa do the advertising and the setup (with your help) for the clinics.
For more information about Boca Costa, please see their website.
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