Link for Health

Guatemala suffers from higher infant and maternal mortality rates than any other country in Latin America and the Caribbean except Haiti. The issue of maternal mortality is one that continues to go unnoticed, despite the devastating toll being taken on women around the world. Every minute, a woman dies from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth; 500,000 women die each year despite the fact that the majority of these deaths could be prevented if women received care from trained providers.

Lack of healthcare access for many women in the rural highlands of Guatemala is of prevalent concern, as is the lack of skilled birth attendants or certified midwifes. In collaboration with their partnering organization, Fundación Raxche and the Ministry of Health in the District of Izabal, The Hope Alliance has agreed to compliment the Ministry’s curriculum and provide training to a pilot group of certified midwives in clean birthing skills.

Issues that are of primary concern to the Ministry of Health and need to be incorporated as part of their training are: neo-natal tetanus, sepsis (both neo-natal and post-partum), cervical cancer, family planning and the use of oxytocin (this can be bought over the counter) to induce early labor leading to complications and hemorrhages resulting in hysterectomy.

In August 2009, The Hope Alliance shipped 5 clinic modules to the hospital T’Zunun Ha in El Estor.  This included an OB/GYN module as a means to bridge the gap between the rural skilled birth attendants and the medical professionals at the clinic.   The Hope Alliance has 3 training mannequins to assist with their training program: a neo-natal resuscitation doll, an EVA Gynecologic Manikin and Manikin Obstetric.

Their goal in the summer of 2010 will be to make this first team the exploratory team and establish the base line curriculum, needs and training parameters to compliment the Ministry of Health’s midwife training program. Subsequent teams would then have an established curriculum to build upon and emphasize those areas in which the midwives lack knowledge and training. Five communities have been identified for the pilot program and each of those communities has identified 20-25 midwifes. Each community will select their 2 senior midwifes (in knowledge not necessarily age) to participate as part of the training with their teams. At the conclusion of the training, the senior midwives will return to their communities and train the remaining midwives in what they learned.

In 2007, The Hope Alliance sent a small surgical team to address the most common needs and to show their commitment to the communities of El Estor. One of those surgical components was an OB/GYN team.  As a result, the group has in place some necessary essentials for surgery including a portable “mash-type” anesthesiology machine.

Since one of their goals is to bridge the gap between the rural skilled birth attendants and the medical professionals at the clinic, they plan to include in their curriculum a training component involving medical professionals. The group also hopes that, by explaining to the rural midwifes what some of the equipment is used for, they may ease some of the fears some of the rural women have of hospitals.

To learn more about The Hope Alliance, please visit their website.