Return to Guatemala

Guatemala has been in the news quite a bit lately. The recent eruption of eruption of Volcán de Fuego, (Volcano of Fire) in June near Antigua, President Jimmy Morales and his moves to exclude the the United Nations backed anti-corruption body, and of course about northward immigration by Guatemalans. Might not seem like a good time to return to Guatemala, and in fact tourism has dropped off because of those events. So you might ask why we are going back at all.

18 years ago in response to the high maternal & child death rate in Huehuetenango, Project Concern International started a place called Casa Materna, a place where mothers with high risk pregnancies (twins, prior cesareans) could reside at during their final weeks of pregnancy. Casa Materna is a one minute walk from the National Hospital in Huehuetenango, and can save laboring mothers lives by avoiding the potentially hours long trip from remote communities. 18 years later, there is still a need for Casa Materna, still a need to lower maternal death rates, and still a need for partners to help provide local training and assistance toward those goals.
C.

Kristen, Suzy, Brenda, Chris, Jemie, and Carly

This year there are six in our group: Suzy our leader is making her 5th trip to Casa Materna, and worked there in its early days. Her day job is a maternity nurse/lactation consultant who makes house calls to first time moms with challenging circumstances. Chris and Brenda are making their 3rd and 2nd trips respectively and both work as family medicine physicians. Kristen is a nurse midwife coming with us for the first time and works mostly doing prenatal and newborn care in a clinic setting. Carly and Jemie are two second-year family medicine residents. Like any amalgam of people, it will be a interesting collaboration, hopefully more akin to Friends than Gilligan's Island.