Dear Friends,
We hope that everyone is well and will enter Thanksgiving and the Holiday Season healthy and able to enjoy as much as possible in the middle of COVID19 social distancing.
Before 2020 comes to an end, we want share a few updates. As we are trying the get away from COVID19, over the past two weeks, hurricane Eta hit Guatemala causing flooding and death in the country’s Southeast. We operate in the Western highlands and Pacific coast; and have avoided the devastation that Eta brought to the Atlantic side. Eta is now bracing for round 2, as hurricane Iota nears landfall. Rescue efforts are underway, and MHI joined them with a donation of PlumpySup for the food relief program in the capital. Our ability to help is limited, as we are literally on the opposite side of the country.
For the fourth time in 2020, MHI allocated money for emergency food relief in the “altiplano”. Our nutrition team has delivered foodstuffs to the most remote areas, where access to markets is still limited. We hope the next few months will offer some improvement in this situation.
Our physical therapy program is slowly resuming, focusing on patients who most need treatment. Despite COVID19 we have supported some of the needed surgical and medical needs for some of the children in the rehabilitation program. This part or our service is very important for our children and we hope to be fully functional in 2021.
A new exciting update is that in the beginning of November we bought 4 portable Butterfly ultrasound probes. This probes connect to a mobile device and with the help of an app they display the images obtained with the probes. As you can imagine this technology could go a long way in the rural areas. A couple of weeks ago a young woman in San Miguel died during childbirth due to an undiagnosed placenta previa. Her death could have been prevented should we have detected her condition with an ultrasound. Our plan is to begin the program this coming January. We are beginning to train selected midwives (comadronas) living in remote communities, they will go through a didactic course focused on identification of high-risk pregnancies and practice with a portable ultrasound machine MHI bought for the clinic in San Miguel, so they learn to manage the Butterfly hand-held device. We hope this initiative will help to reduce the feto-maternal mortality. We are looking forward to kickoff the program in early 2021.
Last but not least, all the food and medical relief we provided to the children and families in the “altiplano” during this year has been possible because of you. We are grateful for that.
May you all stay safe during the Holiday Season, and may 2021 bring an end to the COVID19 pandemic. Thanks for your support.
Mayan Health Initiative