OUR ORGANIZATION
The Mayan Health Initiative (MHI) is a registered 501(c)3 organization headquartered in Chicago, Illinois with local operations in the department of San Marcos in Guatemala.
MHI is led by Dr. Bill Ahrens, former head of Emergency Pediatrics at the University of Illinois Medical Center, and governed by a US-based board of directors.
OUR MISSION
We seek to improve the quality of life of vulnerable children living in the department of San Marcos, especially those with special needs, by providing them with therapeutic services and medical resources which would otherwise be inaccessible to them.
OUR APPROACH
MHI provides funding and strategic planning for teams of health care professionals that we have established in Guatemala’s western highlands to work on three core initiatives: Rehabilitation, Nutrition, and Medical Relief.
All health care providers and other salaried personnel are local Guatemalans, and we work in conjunction with local community groups and other organizations in Guatemala.
OUR STORY
When Dr. Bill Ahrens was head of Emergency Pediatrics at the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center, he traveled regularly to Guatemala over the course of fifteen years to serve as a volunteer with visiting US medical teams.
Working in impoverished, rural areas of the western highlands he was struck by the large numbers of children with disabilities whose families would bring them to the week-long “pop up” clinics, desperately hoping for some kind of help.
None of these children had access to any kind of therapy or medical services, and the visiting volunteer pediatric teams could do very little for them. The Mayan Health Initiative was founded in 2011 in response to the great need for ongoing therapy and medical services for these children.
That year Dr. Ahrens moved to the department of San Marcos, one of the poorest regions of Guatemala, and began working towards opening the first therapy center with four therapists.
Today MHI runs centers in three different towns and employs nineteen professionally trained therapists who together provide physical and speech therapy sessions for over 400 children every week.
Over the years we have established relationships with an increasing number of organizations in Guatemala which offer medical services either free or at low cost to children from families of meagre economic means. This has enabled us to connect more and more children every year to the urgent medical care and resources they need, such as orthopedic or cardiac surgeries, vision and hearing testing, prosthetic limbs.
We provide the contacts, organize appointments and procedures, provide transportation and other logistics, as well as follow up treatment where necessary.
Soon after the founding of MHI we also established a partnership with EDESIA, an NGO in the US committed to combatting malnutrition worldwide through the manufacturing and global distribution of ready-to-use-therapeutic food (RTUF).
Guatemala has the 4th highest rate of malnutrition in the world, and it is a major concern in the municipalities we serve, where it is estimated that 50% to 70% of children are malnourished.
Every year EDESIA donates thousands of sachets of therapeutic food to us, some of which we share with other organizations in our area of Guatemala. Our nutrition team then distributes these to children identified as being at high risk of acute malnutrition, and also to pregnant and lactating mothers.