Wuqu' Kawoq | Maya Health Alliance

We are committed to making primary health care better in rural Guatemala. We start by partnering with indigenous communities to identify health needs. We then deliver primary care to meet our patients' expectations and demands: linkage to referral care and treatment, education, and long-term commitment to patients.

Our women's health program is comprehensive. In addition to primary care for all women, we offer high-quality services including family planning, cancer screening and treatment, pregnancy care, and management of sexually transmitted infections.
We have developed specific expertise in the screening, diagnosis, referral, and treatment of cervical cancer, which is a leading cause of death in Guatemala.
Our obstetrics initiatives focus on reducing maternal mortality through high-quality prenatal care, midwife education, and using new technology. To make childbirth safer, we’ve partnered with many local and global leaders such as Planned Parenthood International, ACOTCHI (a cooperative of indigenous midwives), and the National Institutes of Health.
The foundation of our women’s health education program is Mayan language women’s health education. These classes help women have healthier pregnancies, children, and lives.

We use the term “The Complete Child” to refer to the fact that children in Guatemala have health needs that go beyond malnutrition. Our child health programs integrate nutrition, education, women’s health, and pediatric services.
All of our work is carried out in a way that aligns with the language and culture of the community.
Children in our affiliated communities sometimes require high-level pediatric care, and we have experience caring for complex pediatric conditions such as cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, seizure disorders, child cancers, surgical cases, and more.
Our organization is known as a leader in the field of nutrition, and we frequently train other organizations in Guatemala on how to implement similar programs. We also conduct innovative research funded by prestigious institutions like Grand Challenges Canada.

Our approach to chronic disease care is to integrate high-quality clinical care with health education–all in a patient’s language and culture.
In our chronic disease work, we have become experts in the management of adult and pediatric diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, chronic kidney disease, seizure disorders, rheumatoid arthritis, and other conditions. To complement our chronic disease work, we continue to develop screening programs.

We have pioneered an innovative referral system to bridge the urban-rural divide in Guatemala. We provide deliver extremely complex medical care to patients in very remote rural communities. We have successfully treated many complicated medical conditions in our referral program, including congenital heart disease, inborn errors of metabolism, end-stage kidney disease, complex surgical cases, cancer, and more.
Our team of case managers all speak Mayan languages and do whatever it takes to overcome the barriers to health care for our patients.