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The following excerpt is from a March 9, 2010 article published by Inside Costa Rica. To read the article in its entirety, please click here. (Emphasis Added)
TEGUCIGALPA – Increase of violence is nowadays women’s main worry in Honduras, where more than 400 were killed in 2009 and most of those responsible remain unpunished.
That figure places this country as second, regarding the number of homicides in that social sector, following Guatemala, with 700 cases, according to data published on Monday on the occasion of the International Women’s Day.
We think that the situation of violence is serious, and we have started this year really bad in that reference, Visitacion Padilla Women for Peace Movement National Coordinator Gladys Lanza told press…
Click here to read the rest of the article, or here to read more articles about Health & Safety in Guatemala.
The following excerpt is from a February 18, 2010 article published by CBC News. To read the article in its entirety, please click here.
The rate of stillbirths in developing countries fell more than 30 per cent after birth attendants received basic training in newborn care, researchers have found. The randomized, controlled trial included 62,366 infants in six countries: Argentina, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Guatemala, India, Pakistan and Zambia. The World Health Organization estimates there are more than three million stillbirths worldwide each year, and nearly four million infants die in their first month of life.
Traditional birth attendants, who are typically lay midwives, attended 40 per cent of the deliveries and nearly 75 per cent in the DRC. Participants were trained in routine newborn care, including:
- Resuscitation of babies who have stopped breathing.
- Keeping the baby warm.
- “Kangeroo care” of skin-to-skin contact between mother and baby.
- Common illnesses…
Click here to read the rest of the article, or here to read more articles related to Guatemalan Health.
Here is an article on recent support of Guatemala by the European Union (EU) to the tune of 33.8 million Euros.
“Guatemala City. The EU new initiative supports the five strategic objectives of the Strategic Plan for Food Security and Nutrition (PESAN, Plan Estratégico de Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutricional) from 2009-2012 and will benefit the entire Guatemalan population, with particular attention to the most vulnerable rural population. The donation of the European Union for this program amounts to 33.8 million Euros (about 400 million quetzals).”
What I appreciate most about this EU effort is its focus on preventing future food crises rather than simply alleviating current problems in the form of food subsidies. The ultimate goal, of course, is sustainable food safety and nutrition in Guatemala, which is key to a larger public health initiative.
Please click here for the article.
The following excerpt is from a January 29, 2010 article published by The Times of India. To read the article in its entirety, please click here.
Chilean teenagers are becoming obese due to increasing fast food consumption while those from Mexico, Venezuela and Guatemala are not far behind.
Chile, where 44.7 percent of people over 15 were overweight in 2009, was the worst in Latin America and second in the world, said Euromonitor, which released a study on the subject. Mexico, Venezuela and Guatemala have been listed among the 10 countries with the highest obesity rates among teenagers due to increasing fast food consumption. Last year 31.8 percent of Mexicans teenagers over the age of 15 were found to be obese. The country ranked fifth in the list followed by Venezuela which recorded 29.6 percent obese in the same age group. The figure was 27.5 percent in Guatemala which was in the tenth position…
Click here to read the rest of the article, or here to read more articles about Guatemalan Health.
The following excerpt is from a January 24 article published by the Latin American Herald Tribune. To read the article in its entirety, please click here.
GUATEMALA CITY – A total of 274 rotavirus cases have been reported so far this year in Guatemala, but there have been no deaths, Guatemalan Health Minister Ludwig Ovalle said.
Rotavirus cases have been registered in the western province of Quetzaltenango, the northwestern province of Huehuetenango, the southern provinces of Retalhuleu and Escuintla, and the northern province of Baja Verapaz, Ovalle said.
Rotavirus, which mainly affects children, produces a number of serious symptoms, including vomiting and fever, along with acute and dehydrating diarrhea.
Click here to read the rest of the article, or here to read more articles about Guatemalan health.
The following excerpt is from a January 15, 2010 article published by UNPO.com. To read the article in its entirety, please click here. To view the UN report on which the article is based, click here.
State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples Report Launched
First UN publication on the state of the world’s indigenous peoples reveals alarming statistics on poverty, health, education, employment, human rights, the environment and more.
Indigenous peoples all over the world continue to suffer from disproportionally high rates of poverty, health problems, crime and human rights abuses:
- In the United States, a Native American is 600 times more likely to contract tuberculosis and 62 per cent more likely to commit suicide than the general population.
- In Australia, an indigenous child can expect to die 20 years earlier than his non-native compatriot. The life expectancy gap is also 20 years in Nepal, while in Guatemala it is 13 years and in New Zealand it is 11.
- In parts of Ecuador, indigenous people have 30 times greater risk of throat cancer than the national
average.
…
These are just a few of the startling statistics in the United Nations’ first publication on the State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, a thorough assessment of how indigenous peoples are faring in areas such as health, poverty, education and human rights.
…
Alarming State of Indigenous Health
The publication’s statistics illustrate the gravity of the situation in both developed and developing countries. Poor nutrition, limited access to care, lack of resources crucial to maintaining health and well-being and contamination of natural resources are all contributing factors to the terrible state of indigenous health worldwide.
Click here to read the rest of this article, here to access the UN report on which it is based, or here to read more about Guatemalan Health.
The following excerpt is from an August 27th, 2009 article published by the Economist. This article does a great job of highlighting some public health issues facing the nation. To read the article in its entirety, please click here.
It is hardly one of Latin America’s poorest countries, but according to Unicef almost half of Guatemala’s children are chronically malnourished—the sixth-worst performance in the world. In parts of rural Guatemala, where the population is overwhelmingly of Mayan descent, the incidence of child malnutrition reaches 80%. A diet of little more than tortillas does permanent damage.
This chronic problem has become acute. Higher world prices for food have coincided with a recession-induced fall in money sent back from Guatemalans working in the United States (remittances equal 12% of Guatemala’s GDP). Drought in eastern Guatemala has made things worse still. Many families can scarcely afford beans, an important source of protein, and must sell eggs from their hens rather than feed them to their children.
Click here to read the rest of the article.
The following excerpt is from an article published December 28, 2009 in InsideCostaRica.com. To view the article in its entirety, please click here.
Fire Arms Attacks, Epidemic in Guatemala
GUATEMALA – The increase of fire arms attacks is considered a pandemic in Guatemala by government authorities. In that country the murder average with fire arms is of 48 per 100,000 inhabitant that is why is considered an epidemic due to its effects in public health.
According to recent reports Guatemala is the Central American Nation with higher imports of those kinds of weapons, in which 11.3 million dollars were invested in 2008 and in the first nine months of the current year reached $6.9 million.
The Central Bank pointed out that from September 2002 to September of the current year the spending increased to $59.9 millions. Regarding the circulation of fire arms some are legal and others illegal, the amount varies according to the organism which gives the information. According to report of the UN Development Program mentioned there are 235, 514 fire arms legalized.
To read the rest of the article, please click here.
The following excerpt is from a December 22, 2009 article published by PR Newswire. To view the article in its entirety, please click here.
Hope International Centro de Radioterapia of Guatemala Becomes First in Latin America to Treat Cancer Using RapidArc(R) Radiotherapy Technology From Varian Medical Systems
Patients with head and neck, rectal, and recurring prostate cancer are first to benefit from new technology for fast delivery of image-guided intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT)
GUATEMALA CITY, Dec. 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ – Four cancer patients became the first in Latin America to receive treatment using a fast form of image-guided radiotherapy that potentially enables doctors to improve outcomes while extending modern care to more patients. Doctors at Hope International Centro de Radioterapia of Guatemala are now treating four patients using RapidArc® radiotherapy technology from Varian Medical Systems (NYSE: VAR), one with recurring prostate cancer, one with a nasal cavity tumor, one with rectal cancer, and one with recurring glioblastoma multiforme–an aggressive type of brain tumor.
Clinicians at the center, which treats patients from across Central America, carried out the first treatment for a 66-year-old attorney whose prostate cancer recurred a year after it was first treated using robotic surgery. His first RapidArc treatment was delivered in 3.16 minutes using two arcs, or rotations, of the machine around the patient. By comparison, conventional IMRT (intensity-modulated radiation therapy) treatments would have taken eight to ten minutes…
Click here to read the rest of the article, or here to read more articles about Guatemalan healthcare.
The following excerpt is from an December 18, 2009 article published in China View. To read the article in its entirety, click here.
MEXICO CITY, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) — Guatemala’s health minister told media Thursday that the nation has signed an agreement with the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) to buy medicine and vaccines against A/H1N1 flu.
The minister, Ludwig Ovalle, said that PAHO, the Regional Office for the Americas of the World Health Organization (WHO), will purchase medicine and vaccines for Guatemala at a much cheaper price than the nation does it by itself.
In late November, the WHO said it would donate 1.3 million doses of vaccines against A/H1N1 flu to the nation, which has seen18 deaths from the disease. The first some 260,000 doses are set to arrive in January.
The nation is currently experiencing a wave of cold temperatures which could increase the amount of flu cases.
Earlier this month, the nation opened 58 hostels across the nation for people who might otherwise succumb to cold weather.
Click here to read the rest of the article, and here to read other articles about Guatemalan health.
A very interesting series on water accessibility in Guatemala was written by Rudy Girón, editor of the La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo. His first post, from August 11, 2009 is reproduced here, with his permission. To read the series in its entirety, please click here. The series is in blog format, so it may make sense to scroll to end, and work your way up.
Who Owns the Water in Guatemala?
All Guatemalans, of course, just like the air.
Water belongs to the Guatemalan people and it’s managed by the government; national and local government. In theory, Guatemalans don’t pay for the water itself, but for the distribution system; that is the electricity to pump it and the distribution pipes. The water bill can vary a lot from zone to zone for the same amount of distributed water.
Water is always available in the wealthy neighborhood homes. Water is rarely available in the poor neighborhood homes. Water is not even available in many villages homes. This reality is what brings us to today’s picture. There are several public water faucets located in San Pedro Las Huertas, one the villages that belong to Municipio of La Antigua Guatemala, county in Spanish, pues. That people actually use the public tap water faucets makes me believe that water is not available in all the houses in this aldea, village.
Central America and Guatemala especially have an abundance of water resources, many are groundwater. La Antigua Guatemala is located in a valley irrigated with over six months of a rainy season per year. La Antigua Guatemala is surrounded by mountains and volcanoes that collect even more water. Much of this collected rain ends up as groundwater and then pump to municipal water tanks and finally available through the public water distribution system, of which the public water faucets are part of, and then, in some cases, water is hauled home like the image above shows.
I believe I could do an entire series just on water; any of you interested in learning about water rights, water usages, water wells, municipal water, public water distributions, public washbasin water tanks, water stations and bottled water? If we get 15 requests I will take all the photos and research all the information this week; it is up to you.
Tyler Green1 , Heidi Green1 , Jean Scandlyn2 and Andrew Kestler3
1School of Medicine, University of Colorado Denver, Denver, Colorado, USA
2Departments of Anthropology and Health and Behavioral Sciences, University of Colorado Denver, Denver, Colorado, USA
3Division of Emergency Medicine, University of Colorado Denver, Denver, Colorado, USA
Click here to view this article in its entirety.
© 2009 Green et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Background
Each year medical providers from wealthy countries participate in short-term medical volunteer work in resource-poor countries. Various authors have raised concern that such work has the potential to be harmful to recipient communities; however, the social science and medical literature contains little research into the perceptions of short-term medical volunteer work from the perspective of members of recipient communities. This exploratory study examines the perception of short-term medical volunteer work in Guatemala among groups of actors affected by or participating in these programs.
Methods
The researchers conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 72 individuals, including Guatemalan healthcare providers and health authorities, foreign medical providers, non-medical personnel working on health projects, and Guatemalan parents of children treated by a short-term volunteer group. Detailed notes and summaries of these interviews were uploaded, coded and annotated using Atlas.ti (Scientific Software Development GmbH, Berlin) to identify recurrent themes from the interviews.
Results
Informants commonly identified a need for increased access to medical services in Guatemala, and many believed that short-term medical volunteers are in a position to offer improved access to medical care in the communities where they serve. Informants most frequently cited appropriate patient selection and attention to payment systems as the best means to avoid creating dependence on foreign aid. The most frequent suggestion to improve short-term medical volunteer work was coordination with and respect for local Guatemalan healthcare providers and their communities, as insufficient understanding of the country’s existing healthcare resources and needs may result in perceived harm to the recipient community.
Conclusion
The perceived impact of short-term medical volunteer projects in Guatemala is highly variable and dependent upon the individual project. In this exploratory study, project characteristics were identified that are consistently perceived to be either positive or negative. These findings have direct implications for anyone involved in the planning and execution of short-term medical volunteer projects, including local and foreign medical team members, project planners and coordinators, and health authorities. Most importantly, this preliminary study suggests avenues for future study and evaluation of the impact of short-term medical volunteer programs on local health care services.
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